


NYBD: New York Boat Detectives

by Hihoneyimdead



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: 80s AU, Alternate Universe - Police, Broken Bones, Car Accidents, Child Death, Copious Amounts of Wine, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Death, Fluff, Getting Together, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Lots of dead people, M/M, Mild Gore, Mutual Pining, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Graphic Violence, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, References to Drugs, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vomiting, other fluff i forgot to add
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-02-21 17:22:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 51,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18706906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hihoneyimdead/pseuds/Hihoneyimdead
Summary: “Okay,” he had said. “What’s a boat crime?”And Gilbert had put a hand to his chest, looking completely aghast, and then proceeded to spend the rest of the walk back to the station explaining what a boat crime was. All Pat can remember out of the explanation was that boat crimes were apparently federal offenses and that it was Gilbert’s sole duty as a detective to “defend New York from heinous boat criminals”.Pat was never a fan of boats to begin with, which Gilbert will hopefully never find out about. Because, despite everything, he likes the guy. He wants the guy to like him. As soon as he figures out why exactly he wants to actually be friends with him, he’s going to try and squash that thing down and shove it into a box in the back of his closet and never let it out. Because he’s a cop, a damn good cop, and he has a job to do.





	1. Disco Drug Drama!

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This was absolutely inspired by that one pic of bdg on a boat! This fic will get kind of heavy at points, so sorry about that. 
> 
> Betad by the wonderful electrictrashcan because i'm jared i'm 19 and i never fucking learned how to read

“Oh,” Pat says as soon as the guy walks into the station. “God, no.”

“Hey,” Gilbert grins, leaning against his desk, slinging his sunglasses off his face with a flick of his wrist. He tilts his head back and forth, wiggling his nose a bit. “Notice anything different?”

“Haircut,” Pat deadpans. He’s supposed to be working. He should be working. He has a case. It’s murder. Real scary. Sad. Upsetting, even. Definitely something that takes priority over Brian David Gilbert and the comb taped to his upper lip. 

Gilbert sags a little, and, yeah, maybe Pat feels a bit bad. He offers a slight smile, something a bit more feral than he wanted. 

“Yeah. Jonah said he’d kick me out if I kept looking like a hippie,” Gilbert sighs. 

“You are a hippie,” Pat says. The file on his desk begs to be looked at, read, noticed in the slightest. “And he let you keep…” he taps his own lip with his finger, and Gilbert raises his eyebrows and _beams_. 

“You did notice!”

Pat offers a bigger smile and maybe-subconsciously nudges the file over. It’s what Gilbert’s for. And, thank God, he takes the bait. He snags the file up and starts flipping through it, mustache quivering in thought. It’s disgusting. Atrocious. Horrifying. Pat maybe likes it. 

“Boat crime?” Gilbert asks, in that innocent _oh thank god a boat crime finally I’ve been waiting for literal months_ way that always manages to make its way under Pat’s skin and sink into his cold, dead, tired heart. 

And so Pat genuinely smiles and nods, pushing up his glasses. “Boat crime.”

-

Boat crimes are, in Pat’s opinion, the least of the department’s worries. They’re fucking boats, what goes on on fucking boats?

“Crimes.” Gilbert had shrugged. He took a bite out of his hot dog, grimaced, and quickly tossed the dog down an alley they were passing. Pat had wanted to arrest him. It was litter, the most grievous of crimes. More important than boat crimes, anyway. 

It had been Gilbert’s first day on the force as a real detective, so Pat, of course, had treated him to some classic New York hot dogs. Which, of course, were tubes of dog shit stuffed inside what might have once been a pig’s colon plopped into a bun and dunked in whatever the hell passed for ketchup back then. 

“Okay,” he had said. “What’s a boat crime?”

And Gilbert had put a hand to his chest, looking completely aghast, and then proceeded to spend the rest of the walk back to the station explaining what a boat crime was. All Pat can remember out of the explanation was that boat crimes were apparently federal offenses and that it was Gilbert’s sole duty as a detective to “defend New York from heinous boat criminals”. 

See, Pat was never a fan of boats to begin with. They’re too...boaty. Floaty. They don’t connect to solid, firm soil or earth or surfaces. Also, he gets seasick, which Gilbert will hopefully never find out about. Because, despite everything, he likes the guy. He wants the guy to like him. Which is something that absolutely should not be a thing (he has a reputation, as Simone tactfully puts it, “a miserable trash bastard”). But it is. And, as soon as he figures out why exactly he wants to actually be _friends_ with someone, he’s going to try and squash that thing down and shove it into a box in the back of his closet and never let it out. Because he’s a cop, a damn good cop, and he has a job to do. 

-

“His name was Terry,” Simone says, not looking up from the body lying in front of her. She pokes at him - _it_ \- with a scalpel. “Terry Penny. Age ten.”

Pat wrinkles his nose, a hand helpfully in front of his mouth in case his lunch decides to come up and join them. He doesn’t know why he’s there; it’s not his case, he should be working on the vandalism one Tara had shoved at him as soon as Gilbert had left to go investigate the scene of the boat crime. 

“Drow-” he coughs, gags a little as the stale taste of the morgue hits his tongue. “Drowned, you said?”

Simone nods and turns to switch out her scalpel for an even-bigger scalpel, this one with little pink flowers printed on the handle. 

“Five days ago, I’d say.”

“That corresponds with the-”

“Boat crime,” she finishes, looking up at him, smiling behind her mask. He knows that smile, he hates that smile. It’s her _I know something you don’t_ smile, the one she likes to flash at him every time boat crimes are brought up. “Where’s Brian? He’d love this.”

Pat thinks back to the last time Gilbert saw a dead body. He’d walked in the room, stood still as a statue for a good ten minutes, and run back out to puke all over some poor intern. 

He scrunches his face up and shakes his head. “Nah.”

“You know, I’m surprised he isn’t here,” she says, casually running the scalpel along the victim’s open chest like a goddamn serial killer. “You two are, like, attached.”

“No,” he immediately says, maybe a bit too firmly because she stops her inspection for a moment. He clears his throat and tries again. “No. He’s checking out the scene of the crime.”

She raises an eyebrow. “The one you already checked out?” 

He winces and turns away from the body. “Maybe. He thought I missed something.”

She honks, making him jump a bit. “Expert detective Patrick Gill, miss something?”

He gives her a look. “I’m not a boat expert, Simone.”

“Right,” she nods. “Boat cop’s on the case.”

She gets back to work, and Pat crosses to the other side of the room and hops up on a vacant examination table, looking through the file for the hundredth time. 

It should be an open and shut case. Boat drifting off the coast, coast guard brings in boat, coast guard finds dead, naked child in the hull, cops come in. Boat is registered under a Kevin Hunt. Seems easy enough: find Kevin Hunt, bring him in for questioning, book him after five minutes alone in a room with Tara. Problem is that Kevin Hunt is dead. Died of liver cancer a couple of weeks ago in Baltimore. No family left behind. 

For the hundredth time, Pat wishes that he was working on the vandalism case. 

“So,” Simone says after a couple of minutes. “How was the sex?”

Pat drops the file and looks up to glare at her, she who is not even deigning to stop cutting a child’s lungs open, she who is not laughing.

“What?!” he demands, his voice squeaking way too much for his liking. 

“You and Brian,” she says, sounding way too calm for someone talking about what she’s talking about. “Clayton told me about it.”

“Clayton told you…” he shakes his head. “We went for pizza! Not-”

“Brian’s long, beautiful dong?” she supplies. She turns to her “party table” and grabs a weird tube thing and sticks it into a lung.

Pat hates the mental image he gets. Gilbert, naked as the day he was born, standing on Pat’s bed, legs spread out and hands on his hips and head turned to the side like he’s Superman, glistening. He turns to face Pat, and the illusion is ruined by the dead rat glued to his upper lip. 

Pat shakes himself and hops off the table to gather the papers back together. His hands are shaking; he doesn’t know why they’re shaking, or why they’re suddenly sweaty, or why he suddenly feels like he’s on fire. He brushes some hair behind his ear and adjusts his glasses, adjusts them again, ignores Simone’s continued descriptions of Gilbert’s dick. He can’t get it out of his head, how fucking _perfect_ Gilbert looked posed like that. It’s awful. Pat hates it. He can’t stop thinking about it. 

He haphazardly shoves the papers into the folder and stands, avoiding Simone’s eyes as he hurries out of the room. As he does so, he bumps into a strangely-wet Gilbert, who is walking into the room. His mustache is dripping. There’s seaweed sitting on the shoulders of his suit. He’s smiling. 

“Hey!” he chirps, beams, his voice way too chipper for someone looking like they crawled out of the ocean, his teeth way too white for someone who probably swallowed at least a mouthful of dirty-ass harbor water. Which he probably did. 

“Aaah,” Pat says, scooting around him and practically running out the door. He can hear Simone’s laughter echoing down the hallway behind him, a harsh reminder of how much of a fucking loser he is. 

-

Pat did a guy once in the academy. His name was Jim or John or Jamie, one of those three, and he had red hair and more freckles than there were stars in the sky. In their few moments of downtime, Pat liked to lay in bed with him and trace constellations into his back, his arms, his face. Everywhere. And then one thing led to another, one late Saturday out drinking led to the two of them pressed together in the back seat of Pat’s Mustang. 

Led to Pat waking up alone and tired and stiff, Jim or John or Jason nowhere to be seen. 

Five months later he graduated near the bottom of his class and moved into the city, and that was that. 

-

The words in front of him seem to swim, and he’s pretty sure it isn’t the bottle of wine doing it. 

“Y’know,” Gilbert starts, trailing off. He raises his glass, looks between it and the mess of papers lying on the table between them, and chugs the wine. He lets out a small burp and shakes his head. “I don’t think the, uh. That the, uh. The noodles had anything to do with it.”

Pat frowns and looks up at him, immediately looking back down as soon as Gilbert’s warm, warm, beautiful, warm eyes met his own. “Really?” 

“Yeah. They’re Happy Moon’s. Their noodles are, like-”

Pat groans and tosses his head back. “Man, _fuck_ that place.”

“Yeah! Fuck it!”

Pat sits up and fills both their glasses again, messily. Some wine gets on the table. Without thinking, he bends over and licks it up and, forgetting-not-forgetting to wipe his mouth, raises his glass in a toast. As Gilbert toasts back, his eyes seem focused on Pat’s mouth. Good. 

“To shitty noodles,” Pat proposes. 

“T’shit noodles.” Gilbert nods. 

They down their wine, and Pat finds himself unable to look away from Gilbert’s throat, how it moves with every swallow and breath and how damn beautiful it is. He internally slaps himself and forces himself to look somewhere else. Like Gilbert’s hair, messy and still dusted in salt from the harbor. Or his lips, pulling away from the glass in what seems to be slow motion. 

Pat swallows the feeling rising in his throat and looks back down at the crime papers. Papers of the crime. Papers of destiny. 

He doesn’t really remember when this started. Because they’re cops, damn good cops, damn serious cops who get the job done seriously and professionally. But the first case the two of them worked together on, Pat had given up on trying to deal with Gilbert’s shitty handwriting sober, and Gilbert was tired of dealing with a tired and grouchy Pat sober. And so it slowly went from collaboration in the day to getting drunk off their asses and staring at the case until it slowly unraveled itself before them. It hasn’t failed yet; it’s a foolproof method. Until. Until Drunk Pat realized that, yeah, the hippie-ass motherfucker sitting across from him drinking his wine was actually ridiculously handsome. Which is something that Sober Pat refuses to even think about because the thought of having this sort of close contact with anyone makes his skin crawl, and not in the good way. 

“So,” Pat hums, leaning forward and letting his head rest against his fist, skimming back over the paper he’s been trying to go over for the past hour. “No noodles. What about chicken?”

Gilbert lets out a peal of laughter that Pat has to fight to not join in with. He’s beautiful when he laughs, Pat thinks. He’s always beautiful, even when covered in seaweed and what might have been fish cum, now that Pat thinks about it. 

“Or fish cum,” Pat adds as soon as Gilbert’s fit is winding down, which sends the guy into another burst. He slowly leans to the side, eyes closed, and he falls out of his chair and onto a very irked Charlie. He lies there for a moment before sitting up and smiling crookedly. 

“Pat Gill, what does fish cum look like?” he asks. 

Pat pretends to think for a moment, brow furrowed in thought, before deciding on a simple, “Jizz, but greener.”

“Oh,” Gilbert nods, sagely nods, wisely nods, head and neck bobbing up and down. Pat wants to lick it, him, fuck. “Of course.”

“And sometimes,” Pat adds, because he can’t stop himself when he’s making Gilbert laugh. “when the light hits it just right, it shines like a disco ball.”

Gilbert moans and tilts his head back. “Oh, now you’re speaking my language.”

Pat, who heard the moan and whose brain had immediately shut down upon hearing said moan, doesn’t respond with anything other than a long sigh. 

And then a thought hits him. Disco ball, Baltimore, ten-year-old child. 

“Bri,” he says, narrowly missing how Gilbert’s eyes light up at the name. He reaches for a pen and writes some notes down on the nearest notepad. “Ask Simone to look for illegal shit.”

“Drugs?” Gilbert asks, crawling back up onto his chair and watching Pat write. “Alcohol? What’re we looking for?”

“I got a hunch,” Pat answers, totally not answering. He’s on a roll. He can’t stop to talk. 

_Coke??????????_

“That’s a lot of question marks, Pat,” Gilbert helpfully notes. “Must be one helluva hunch.”

Pat nods, ignoring the Charlie that hops up onto his lap. “Specifically nails. Make sure she checks the nails, ‘kay?”

“Yep.”

“All the nails. And maybe teeth if she does that thing.”

“She doesn’t.”

He glances up and flashes a smile that Gilbert is quick to return. 

“Oh,” he says, already formulating a genius plan. “She will.”

-

“Please?” Pat asks. 

Simone frowns. “Pat, no. Teeth are my limit.”

He raises an eyebrow, and she shrugs and looks back down at her paperwork. It’s not like she’s doing it, she never does, leaving it for the interns, but she’s probably doing that thing she does where she pretends to be working so he has to beg. And his knees are already protesting the potential bending they’ll have to do. 

“They’re just teeth,” he starts off, lamely, almost immediately getting cut off by the snap of Simone’s pencil as it breaks in half. 

“Have you seen a dead child’s teeth, Patrick?”

“Uh-”

She smiles up at him, fiercely, and he can see the circles forming under her eyes. She really shouldn’t even be in this early in the morning; as far he knows, it was just Gilbert’s incessant calling that got her up before eight. The three of them were in the same room for a bit, until she pulled out the body and sent Gilbert stumbling out of the room. And then she had dug around under the nails for a bit with the smallest scalpel she had. Which, admittedly, was still about the size of a goddamn baseball bat. 

“They aren’t all in yet,” she says. “Even if they were, whatever you think was on them couldn’t be found. Either saltwater would’ve gotten it or saliva would’ve. And, besides, the lab won’t be done processing the nail shit for weeks.”

She makes a show of checking a watch that isn’t there. Pat sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It’s technically supposed to be tied back, but he honestly couldn’t give less of a shit. His head’s pounding, his throat feels like it was hit with a sandblaster, and the sterile white lights of the morgue are cutting through his sunglasses. If anything, Gilbert needed to tie that wilted bush on his face back. It kept shedding all over the dead child. 

“Why don’t you go...you know,” she offers, tilting her head towards the door. Pat can hear Gilbert out there retching. “Hold his hair. Get out of mine.”

He rolls his eyes, not like Simone would be able to see it. “He’s a grown man.”

“And he’s throwing up all over Jenna.”

Pat glances back at the door, through the window set into it, and winces as he watches Gilbert hovering over the intern, hands panic-flapping. He sighs again and ducks his head, the complaining moving from his knees to his neck. He ignores Simone’s part-triumphant-part-ridiculously-irked smile and goes to leave. 

“Oh, and Pat,” she says, making him pause. “Tell him to shave that goddamn ratstache before he comes in here next. It’s going to be fucking impossible to get his slimy DNA out of the kid’s cuticles.”

Pat, despite himself, shudders, and he jerks his head in a quick nod. And, as he walks out the door and into the hallway, he swears that he hears something coming from one of the body drawers (he still doesn’t know what to call them after nearly five years on the force). But before he can think on it, the intern’s shoving a very shaky Gilbert into his arms (he ignores the sudden rush he gets as Gilbert leans back against his chest, his hair tickling Pat’s nose, his breaths shallow and weak) and taking off down the hall. 

Gilbert looks up at Pat and weakly smiles. “No teeth?”

“Uh-huh,” Pat says, because that’s all he can say because Gilbert’s right there. “No teeth. Lunch?”

Gilbert nods, but he doesn’t make an effort to move out of Pat’s arms. Which is fine. Great. Perfect. 

“Uh. Want me to take you home?” Pat asks after just too long of a moment spent staring down into Gilbert’s eyes. 

At that, Gilbert stiffens and stands up straight, wiping his mouth a bit. He avoids Pat’s eyes, which hurts for some reason. 

“Nah,” he says. “I’m good. Just gotta get some juice in me.”

Pat slowly nods and shoves his hands in his pockets lamely, looking down at the linoleum. 

“McD’s good?” he asks. 

“Yeah.”

“Cool.”

Neither of them moves for a long moment, long enough for the intern to come rushing back down the hall in a fresh set of clothes coughing out, “Get a room”. And it’s only then that the two of them snap back into reality and start down the too-long hallway to the light of day that they’re both dreading. Gilbert first, Pat second, the uncomfortable silence third. 

-

It’s four weeks by the time that the results are in, and by then Pat’s got a picture of Kevin Hunt and his kid on his desk. The kid’s small, barely looking like he’s five, but Pat knows better. The date reads ‘March 5, 1983’, three weeks before Terry Penny and his boat washed up on Pat’s metaphorical doorstep. 

“I can see it,” Gilbert nods, taking another bite out of his donut, the crumbs and glaze trapping themselves in the spider’s web of a mustache. He taps his nose. “Same nose.”

“Yeah,” Pat agrees. He knows this. Drunk Pat isn’t an idiot, he’s just drunk enough to consider the really out-there ideas. He clicks his pen a couple times just to give his hands something to do other than reach up and clean off the mustache. “Poor kid.”

Gilbert hums around his donut. It’s chocolate and banana and, for some ungodly reason, sprinkled with bacon. Pat’s own is a regular glazed, and it’s sitting untouched on an old case file on his desk. The vandalism one, specifically, because he knows he isn’t going to be touching that one until the current boat crime is solved (he refuses to acknowledge that he knows that he wouldn’t be able to even think about looking at the vandalism thing without Gilbert). 

Pat slides the report to Gilbert, who manages to catch it with a foot. A foot on Pat’s desk, with his leg up, with his neatly-pressed pants pressed tight against said leg, with Pat’s eyes drawn to it. 

“Dad was a disco man, huh?” Gilbert asks, apparently not noticing Pat staring at his ankle. 

Pat grunts and thankfully manages to pull his eyes away, to look down at the report. Lots of salt, some ecstasy. Poor kid indeed. 

“Mom’s somewhere in Alabama, I bet,” Pat says. “Not like it mattered, based off what Kerry said.”

Tim Kerry, the chief down in the area of Baltimore Hunt was said to be in, was very clear that Hunt did not have any woman at home, instead living with a “roommate” by the name of Jim Horace, a name that rings a tiny little bell in the back of Pat’s mind. But he can deal with Horace later, when he isn’t solving a murder case. 

Gilbert stiffens just a bit, pulling his leg down off the desk, and grabbing a nearby chair and dragging that over, and sitting in it. 

“He was…”

Pat jerks his head in a nod. It’s not his place to talk about this. Respect the dead and all. 

“Ah,” Gilbert says, seemingly caught off guard. “Huh. So you’re thinking that, without a dad and with a weird roommate, Penny ran off on a boat full of disco drugs and somehow managed to drown himself?”

Pat shrugs. “Not like we’ve got anything else to go on.”

“I mean,” Gilbert says, struggling a bit. He leans closer, close enough for his breath to tickle Pat’s nose, close enough for Pat to feel the need to close the distance (he doesn’t). “Couple of days on a boat full of drugs and almost nothing else, you’ll do anything. Maybe he got thirsty.”

“Ducked his head in the ocean.”

“Opened his mouth and forgot to close it.”

Pat feels a chill run down his spine. He can picture it now, the kid stumbling to the edge, leaning over just enough to take a sip, and feeling too heavy to lift himself back up. Maybe he knew what it was, what he had eaten, with his dad and all. Grief does some funny things to a person. Pat knows that, he’s seen it. One time he had a case where a woman strangled a dog with a flower crown because it was her dead mother’s and she wanted it to join the old lady in heaven. 

Maybe Terry Penny knew what he was doing, and Pat feels something curl in his chest at the thought, something heavy and angry. 

“Shit,” he hears himself say. 

Gilbert nods and leans back in his chair, staring at something over Pat’s shoulder, looking distant. 

“God, I hope you’re not right,” he says. 

-

Three days later, the case is shoved into the ‘Solved’ cabinet hiding behind the vending machine, right next to the flower crown case. 

“We need a new cabinet,” Jeff comments, attempting shoving the drawer shut. It stubbornly refuses, instead opening more and more with every push. 

“I’ll bring it up at the next meeting,” Pat says. He curls his fingers into the sleeves of his jacket, clenching it like a lifeline. He might need to take a day or two off after this one; hopefully Tara will let him. He never liked kid cases. 

Gilbert meets him outside of the room with a cup of coffee that Pat immediately takes. He takes a sip and grimaces. No sugar, a drop or two of vinegar, just how he needs it. 

“Pizza tonight?” Gilbert asks, voice soft. He hasn’t been on the force that long, a detective for even less, and the cases he takes usually don’t involve child murder-suicides. Pat can see the lines under his eyes. He looks exhausted, and it’s only ten in the morning. 

“Yeah,” Pat nods. He hesitantly reaches out and grips Gilbert’s wrist, not knowing why. It feels right. “You okay?”

Gilbert’s eyes lock onto Pat’s hand. “Uh...yeah. I don’t know, actually. Is this kind of thing normal?”

Pat sighs and tries to look the guy in the eyes, failing as soon as he sees how damn vulnerable he looks. Fuck, he might’ve been crying as he presented the case to Tara. Pat doesn’t know. He wasn’t there. He was outside reading over the vandalism file for the first time since he got it more than a month before. 

“You don’t get used to it,” he says after a moment of careful thought. He doesn’t think he’d be able to deal with Gilbert having a breakdown in the hallway outside the break room. “It sucks, and it’s awful, and it’s Hell. And it never stops. But that’s just the job. If we weren’t here to keep things at least a bit cleaner, it’d be way worse.”

“I know,” Gilbert quietly says. “It’s why I’m here.”

Pat remembers when he was that altruistic, way back when he started at the academy. It lasted a week. Hearing Gilbert still thinking that way is a bit...sad. Because he knows it’s going to fade soon. That’s the job, it wears you down and breaks you and you have to patch yourself up and keep going because despite everything you try to do to fix the broken world you live in, you can’t. It keeps growing and getting worse and worse and sometimes it feels like you’re the only one there to keep it at bay. 

Pat rests his coffee on the heater and pulls Gilbert into a loose hug without thinking. It just feels right. He feels his pulse begin to pick up and hopes to whatever god’s left in this world that Gilbert doesn’t acknowledge it. And he doesn’t, silently shaking in place. 

“You’re a good man, Gilbert,” Pat says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. 

“So are you, Gill,” Gilbert says, voice still somehow that strange optimistic trill that Pat looks forward to hearing every day. 

Gilbert lets his head drop onto Pat’s shoulder, and, for a moment, Pat doesn’t feel quite as alone in the world.


	2. Interlude: An Unwelcome Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeff raises his eyebrows apologetically. “Sorry, man. Wasn’t my idea. Blame Gilbert.”
> 
> Pat pauses and gives him a strange look, almost a feral one. He probably looks actually feral, and he’s extremely okay with that right now. 
> 
> “Who?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a commercial break of sorts, here because I wrote it thinking that I wouldn't get chapter two done by Saturday. I did. So probably expect one of these every other chapter. These will absolutely not be edited because fuuuuuck that. These will, though, tie into the main story in one way or another. You'll see. 
> 
> -Wooz

Pat walks into the station three hours late, hungover, and dressed in yesterday’s clothes. He knows he looks like shit. He’s proud of it. He wears his dishonor like a medal. He likes coming into work looking like he crawled out of a trash can. It drives Tara crazy. 

He knows that his desk isn’t any better, practically piled to the ceiling with cases he hasn’t had the time or interest to go through. The last case he seriously worked on, a simple robbery one where it turned out the monkey was, in fact, framed and the culprit was actually the store owner, left him wiped out. That was two weeks ago. He knows he’s got to do something, and he is. He’s been looking at a boat theft for the past while that he just can’t get his head around. And he expects to sit down at his desk, flip open the file, and immediately fall back asleep because it’s eleven in the morning and he already wants to crawl back in bed. But, as he approaches where the mountain of papers is supposed to be, he stands still and stares at the clean, clean desk. 

He pulls his chair out and sits, taking a too-long sip of his boiling-hot coffee. He grimaces. Too much vinegar. 

There’s a single file left on the desk, sitting right in the middle with a bright yellow post-it note on top. There’s a smiley face on it. Pat rolls his eyes, rumples it up, and tosses it across the room and into the trashcan. Jeff, who is walking by with a pile of folders in his arms almost as tall as he is, whoops appreciatively. 

“Those mine?” Pat asks, nodding to the stack of files. 

Jeff nods, smiling. “Yep!”

Pat stands and takes a file off the top, ignoring Jeff’s protests, and he opens it. And right on the front page is a big stamp. 

Solved. 

He dumps that one on the desk, grabs another one, opens it, dumps that one on the desk when he sees the big “Solved” stamp on the front page. 

“What the fuck?” he demands, snatching another one and waving it around because he needs something to do with his hands that isn’t ripping things in half or spilling his coffee. 

Jeff raises his eyebrows apologetically. “Sorry, man. Wasn’t my idea. Blame Gilbert.”

Pat pauses and gives him a strange look, almost a feral one. He probably looks actually feral, and he’s extremely okay with that right now. 

“Who?”

“New guy,” Jeff explains. He shifts from foot to foot, looking mildly uncomfortable. “Went through all of them in, what, three hours?”

Pat blinks and drops his arm, looking around the room. Only a couple of people are looking at him. The rest are all working, or, in one guy’s case, reading the paper. 

“You’re kidding me,” he says, looking back at the stack of folders. Some of them are dozens of pages thick. The hell is this guy?

There’s a slight breeze behind him, and Pat turns to see a man he’s never seen before reaching for the original file off of Pat’s desk. He’s shorter than him with long hair and a yellow floral dress shirt, blue slacks, and two watches.

The man nervously laughs and stands back up, sticking his hands in his back pockets. Pat idly thinks that his hair looks like the softest thing on the planet. 

“Hey,” the man says, smiling. Pat feels his heart pick up. 

“Hi,” Pat says. 

Jeff slowly begins to inch away; Pat lets him. He has bigger fish to fry. 

“You’re Detective Gill,” the man says, bouncing a bit on the balls of his feet, his smile shining brighter than the fluorescent lights in the room. Pat actually flinches a bit, pulling his sunglasses out of his breast pocket and sliding them on over his regular glasses. 

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s me. You’re…”

“Gilbert,” the man, Gilbert, says, sticking a hand out. Pat takes it. “Brian David Gilbert. Just graduated to the big boys.”

Now that Pat thinks about it, he might’ve seen Gilbert downstairs before. One of the traffic cops, probably, or one of the ones he brought to take down bank robbers or something. His brain supplies him with the fact that, yes, Gilbert was on a case with him months ago and, yes, he looked ridiculously good in his uniform. So good that Pat hooked up with his ex-girlfriend for a night to forget the sight of Gilbert’s ass in those pants. Oh, God, he’s fucked. 

“Congrats,” Pat says, swallowing the traitorous feeling rising in him. One that’s begging for him to grab Gilbert for lunch and never bring him back because, wow, he really wants to see what’s under that shirt. “And, uh, good on the cases. Some of those were fucking me over.”

Gilbert laughs. “Yeah, I could tell. Some of those were awful. Like the boat theft? Who’da thought it was the butler?”

Pat gets a flash in his mind of the butler, someone who had barely even been considered due to the fact that he was supposedly fucking the owner’s wife at the time of the theft, having an identical twin, which he had, and leaving the twin with the wife while running off to steal the boat. Fuck, he should’ve thought of that. 

“Yeah,” he weakly says, tugging his hand out of Gilbert’s grasp and shoving it behind him so he can lean casually against the desk. “Wow.”

“Anyway, I’m so glad to finally meet you! You’re kind of my inspiration for, you know, doing this.”

Pat blinks. “What?”

Gilbert continues waving a hand about. “You know, that circus case from ‘78? I remember reading about that in the paper and just thinking, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be a cop like that guy.’”

Clayton stifles a laugh from the next desk over, and Pat feels a bit of heat rise to his cheeks. That case was embarrassing. He and Tara had to go undercover for that one, hiding out with the clowns until they caught the ringmaster boning the two-headed freak show boy behind the peanut stand after hours. It had made national headlines for some fucking reason, and it got Tara the promotion she deserved. Pat was fine without, though, choosing to stay at his desk and only occasionally do work between depressive episodes. 

“Oh,” he says. “Cool.”

Gilbert snaps his mouth shut, eyes wide. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I must be stealing your thunder right now. You were going to be working on these cases, huh?”

Pat wasn’t, and he says as much. “Nope. Was actually about to head out for lunch.”

“Oh,” Gilbert says, sagging a bit. He’s making puppy eyes. Pat can’t stand puppy eyes. They, along with cats and pizza, are his only weaknesses. 

So he sighs and stands up, mentally trying to figure out what the shittiest place to eat around the station is. He settles on Gino’s, which is famous for having the worst ‘dogs on this side of the city.

“You want to come with? A sort of celebration for solving literally all of my cases in three hours.”

Gilbert literally jumps for joy, hopping a bit in place. He’s adorable, fuck. 

As the two of them leave, Tara pokes her head out of her office, presumably to yell at him to actually do some for the first time in five years. But Pat knows the back way out, the one hidden where the fire escape was supposed to be, so he takes Gilbert out that way. 

In the back of his mind, he knows he’s fucked. Because he was doing so well with it. But, no, here comes the most handsome and perfect man on the planet with his perfectly-pressed shirts and apparently-genius brain. Pat doesn’t stand a chance unless he takes several precautionary measures. Like scaring Gilbert off before he gets a chance to get to know him. Because Pat, when he falls, he falls hard. And he does not want to fall for some twink detective named Brian.


	3. Elephant vs Boat: Dawn of Ages!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian sniffs and shakes his head. “You don’t get it. Jonah’s gonna kick my ass to hell and back for letting this happen to her.”
> 
> “I’ll kick his ass first,” Pat scowls. He angrily slurps at his soda, then he pauses. “Wait, this has happened before?”
> 
> Brian shakes his head, snorting. “God, I love her. But…”
> 
> “Bri, you’re my best friend and I get you’re going through a thing right now. But she kind of brought this upon herself. This isn’t your fault.”
> 
> “But it is! If I can’t prove her innocent, what kind of cop am I?” He pauses, thinks for a moment, continues, softer, “What kind of a brother am I?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Homophobic language is in this chapter! The big f-slur, especially, so please watch out for that if you aren't comfortable with it. 
> 
> Otherwise, hello! Chapter two's here a day early because I have to go see detective pikachu seventeen times tomorrow.

Someone once told Pat that he needed a haircut. At the time, it seemed normal. Just Tom Duong from next door commenting on something. Pat didn’t get a haircut, and he went away to the academy two months later and never saw him again. 

But then, at the academy, Pat found out what Tom had meant. And he had cut his hair as short as he could bear and went on with his life. 

Years later, as he sits on the floor in front of his couch with his head between Brian David Gilbert’s legs, letting him braid his hair, he wishes it was longer. Regulations be damned, if this is how he could feel every day, he’d let his hair be as long as Brian demanded. 

Pat’s eyes are closed; he’s more relaxed than he’s been in months and he can feel the weight of the Penny case lifting off of his shoulders and into the air around them, drifting out the open window and into the smoggy New York air. Pat would be purring if he could, sounding more like Charles than himself. 

“What kind of shampoo do you use?” Brian asks, and Pat can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Water,” he mumbles, and Brian laughs, bright and tinkling. 

Pat doesn’t remember when it shifted from ‘Gilbert’ to ‘Brian’. It just did. And it fits him more than ‘Gilbert’ ever would. ‘Brian’ is loose, free, casual. ‘Gilbert’ sleeps in a three-piece suit and collects stamps. 

“I’m being serious, Pat,” Brian says, voice lilting just so slightly. They may have been drinking before this. “Your hair’s a mess.”

When Pat doesn’t answer, Brian gasps and drops his hands from Pat’s hair; Pat whines pathetically. 

“That’s it, we’re going,” Brian announces, swinging a leg over Pat’s head and standing, bones popping. 

“Where?” Pat asks. He makes no attempt to stand; he’s way too old to even think about moving that quickly in such a state. 

“Safeway,” is Brian’s simple answer. It’s short, quick, and just enough to make Pat think about the best way to not to go Safeway. Long enough for Brian to grab Pat’s arms and lift him to his feet, enough for Pat’s heart to skip a beat and start dancing. He stumbles a bit and gives Brian a glare that he doesn’t really mean. 

Brian, who looks more determined than Pat’s ever seen him, crosses his arms and cocks his hips a bit. A total power stance, once that leaves Pat winded. Or maybe that’s the look he’s giving him, one that says _we’re going to goddamn Safeway, Patrick_. Brian’s floral sleeves are rolled up, because he really meant business when he talked about braiding. It shows off his arms, which is very unfair. Pat’s drunk off of both the copious amounts of wine and off of Brian’s touch, he can’t deal with this. Even the mustache looks moderately okay, and that’s the greatest crime of them all. 

It’s a wonder Pat can say anything, let alone agree to go to Safeway and buy seven different types of shampoos. But he does, and his wallet will regret it in the morning. But Pat, in the very least, regrets nothing. 

-

When he walks into the station the next morning, it’s dead silent. Everyone’s watching the door to Tara’s office, and, even from his desk by the exit, Pat can hear arguing. Something about eyes, boats, tomatoes. Must be Brian. 

The vandalism file’s gone. So are five of the coffee cups that’ve been on his desk since January. So is a picture of him and Brian from a year ago, the time he took Brian to the Statue of Liberty because, come on, everyone’s got to see it at some point. 

With nothing else to do, Pat grabs a coke off of Clayton’s desk, cracks open a random case off his desk that he knows he’s going to pass off to one of the rookies once he’s got the vandalism case back and gets reading. 

Halfway through a slightly-too-thorough description of a dead elephant’s innards, Brian comes storming out of Tara’s office, immediately crashing into a chair close to Pat’s desk and sliding over. His mouth is turned in a rare scowl, and his eyes are red. Even his mustache looks troubled, twitching slightly with every breath he takes. 

“I’m off the case,” Brian huffs out, fingers tapping on the arm of his chair. His nails are painted, Pat notices. Not regulation. Bright pink. They match his tie. It would look nice if said tie wasn’t rumpled up like it was grabbed, and if the polish wasn’t already chipping away. 

The realization of what Brian had said finally settles in, and Pat coughs up a bit of his soda. Brian’s patting his back, which makes him cough even more. Great. 

“What?” he squeaks as soon as he’s able to breathe again. 

Brian grimly nods. “Yeah. Probably Fagan’s idea.”

Pat settles back in his chair reluctantly and glances at Tara’s door. Someone else walked in while he was losing a lung, and now he can see two figures having a very heated discussion behind the frosted glass. Not loud enough for him to hear, but he can tell them from a mile away. 

Ronald Fagan always seemed like the personification of New York City itself, with a stained-white smile able to be seen from a mile away, heavily-greased hair that just oozes mob ties, expensive suits that he probably stole out of a Chess King’s dumpster. He’s a few inches shorter than Pat, but the few times the two of them have met, Fagan’s presence left Pat hiding in Tara’s shadow, which he is not proud of. Since getting elected mayor ten years ago, crime’s only gone up and Pat’s self-worth has only gone down. 

The vandalism case was Fagan’s. Someone had broken into one of his luxury yachts and spray painted a bunch of very realistic eyeballs and dicks onto the deck, the sides, everything. Most notably, though, was what was painted on the front in big, blue, bubbly letters: “Donkey Dong”. The minute Pat had seen that in the file, he almost fell out of his chair laughing. And Brian, who had finally taken a look at the file after a long afternoon of crying at McDonald’s, had smiled for the first time that day. But obviously the mayor wasn’t happy with it, and so the case presented itself as a testament to how thin-skinned white guys could be. 

Brian follows Pat’s gaze. “Can he even do this? I mean, you’re probably going to get the case, and you aren’t the boat guy.”

Pat shrugs. “He’s the mayor.”

“Yeah. But, like, _we’re_ the boat cops. This is what _we_ do.”

Pat doesn’t bother correcting him. Brian’s the boat cop; Pat just helps out because regular crimes grate on him. The ‘we’, though, sent a weird feeling down his spine, not quite joy but also not quite hate. Something in the middle. Like if he could feel apathy.

He slaps on a fake smile, clapping his hand on Brian’s shoulder. 

“But hey! At least now you get to move on to something new! Here,” Pat says, handing him the elephant case. “this seems interesting.”

Brian flips through it dejectedly. “No boats, though.” 

“No, but elephants are practically boats.”

Brian’s mouth twitches. “And how’s that?”

Pat lets out a breath and grabs his notepad and pen, drawing out both a shoddy boat and an even shoddier elephant. After a moment, he gives the elephant a hat. 

“See,” he says, drawing some squiggles under both boat and animal. “Both can cross through water with no problem.” He adds some stick figures on top of the boat, and he takes a little more time to draw a mini-Pat and a mini-Brian on top of the elephant. “And they carry people.” He slaps his pen down on the table and crosses his arms triumphantly with a grin. “Thus, elephants are just living boats.”

Brian blinks, narrows his eyes at the drawings. Pat holds his position, though his smile flickers a bit the longer Brian sits there in silence. Brian grabs the pen after a moment and adds a couple of little fish in the waves. 

“See,” he says, tapping the pen against the paper. “But what if there were piranhas? The elephant would be eaten alive, but the boat would be fine.”

Pat drops his smile and yanks the pen back, tapping it against his chin for a moment before adding smiles to the piranhas. 

“Piranhas don’t eat elephants. They eat, like, rats and shit.”

Brian takes the pen back. A giant wave is added to the drawings. 

“Okay,” he says. “If there was a giant wave, though, the boat would be fine. It’s designed for it. The people, yeah, they’re fucking dead. But the boat would live on. Elephants, though. Bernie here would get water all up in his trunk and drown.”

“Bernie?” Pat asks, laughing a bit. 

Brian shrugs. “He needed a name.”

“Ah,” Pat says. He decides to grab a separate pen to save the hassle and adds a cloud of what’s supposed to be smoke above the boat. “If the boat ran out of juice, though, no force of nature could get it back to shore.”

“Except, you know, currents.”

Pat shoots Brian a look, but he can’t hold it for long. He’s smiling. This, this is his element. 

“Besides,” Brian continues. “Any safe boater would keep an extra can of fuel onboard. If the elephant ran out of energy, it would just go down.”

“Who says elephants can’t do the back float?” Pat asks. 

“You can’t do the back float.” 

Pat gasps and puts a hand to his chest. “You wound me, Brian.”

“I’m just providing the facts,” Brian says, voice smug as all hell. 

Pat laughs and shakes his head, bending down to add a snorkel to the elephant, but there’s a sudden cough from behind the two of them. Pat turns around and flinches a bit as Tara looms over them, face stern, arms crossed, manilla folder in her left hand. Ronald Fagan, behind her, swaggers out of the station like he owns the place. Which he does.

“If you’re done,” she says. Pat and Brian both nod, and she continues. “Pat, you’re on the Fagan case. Hurry it up. He’s starting to get impatient.”

“What about Brian?” Pat asks, because he’s a dumbass with no tact. 

She shoots Brian a concerned look before settling back into her stony self. Pat blinks up at her, not impressed. He knows she doesn’t want this any more than he or Brian does. 

“He has too much of a personal connection to the case,” she says. 

Brian, next to him, sags in his seat, keeping his head low. Pat fights the urge to put a hand on his...well, anywhere, to try and stabilize him. 

Instead, he nods and takes the file from her. He takes a peek inside, and, right at the top of the suspect list, is a ‘Laura Gilbert’. Something clicks and he closes the file, placing it behind him on his desk. 

He nods and gives Tara a thumbs-up. “Will do, boss.”

She lets out a breath he realizes she’s been holding the whole time and glances down at Brian, who is rolling his chair back and forth slightly. 

“You’re taking the zoo case. You’re our best,” she announces, and Pat hates the pang of jealousy hitting his chest. “I have faith in you.”

“Yes’m,” Brian mutters, not looking up from the floor.

“Good,” she says. And, with that, she turns and strides back to her office, clearing a path through a group of rookies like she’s goddamn Moses.

Pat sits there for a moment before turning to face a despondent-looking Brian. He opens his mouth to say something, closes it, and tries again. 

“You...wanna talk about it?” 

Brian shakes his head and stares down at the elephant guts in the file in front of him. 

“She’ll be fine,” he says. 

Pat drops a hand onto Brian’s knee as supportively as he can manage and smiles. Brian doesn’t smile back. 

-

Pat’s never met Brian’s roommates. All he knows is that one, Jonah, works across town doing something with either lumber or ducks (Brian won’t explain), and that the other is Brian’s sister. They apparently came up to New York with him and absolutely refuse to leave, and Brian won’t have it any other way. He’s told Pat as much just about every time Pat drops him off at his place after a night of drinks with the rest of the precinct. 

“Jonah’s gonna kill me,” Brian says over lunch, marking the first words he’s said since they left for lunch an hour and a half ago. He hasn’t touched his burger yet, and his fries are almost absolutely frozen solid by now. He’s been staring at a packet of ketchup for the past five minutes as Pat finished eating. 

The McDonald’s around them buzzes with New York energy. There’s a man in the booth next to them jerking off, a woman across the restaurant distributing onions to her eight children, someone in a lobster costume busking by the bathrooms, and a group of cops from another precinct sitting by the exit giving the onion woman dirty looks. The poor girl behind the counter is the only one working it, and the line in front of her is probably five miles long at least. Pat is not envious of her. 

He takes a sip of his coke and swallows it, trying to come up with something. Anything. Something better than, _‘We’ve been here for an hour already and Tara’s going to have our asses if you don’t stop moping’_. 

“Like you said, she’ll be fine,” he settles on. 

Brian sniffs and shakes his head. “You don’t get it. Jonah’s gonna kick my ass to hell and back for letting this happen to her.”

“I’ll kick his ass first,” Pat scowls. He angrily slurps at his soda, then he pauses. “Wait, this has happened before?”

Brian shakes his head, snorting. “God, I love her. But…”

Pat hums, pretending to understand. He doesn’t. His siblings all went off into the military right out of high school, they were that type of kid. They kept him in line growing up. Every time he climbed out his window to go hit up the gas station down the road, one of them was always at the driveway with handcuffs or a baseball bat. Sometimes, if he was lucky, it was just the hose. One time it was his dad with his billy club. 

“Please don’t kick Jonah’s ass,” Brian says, pleads. He looks Pat in the eyes, and, fuck, Pat can’t say no to that. “I deserve it.”

Okay, he can say no to that. 

“Bri, you’re my best friend and I get you’re going through a thing right now. But she kind of brought this upon herself. This isn’t your fault.”

“But it is! If I can’t prove her innocent, what kind of cop am I?” He pauses, thinks for a moment, continues, softer, “What kind of a brother am I?”

Pat winces and rubs the back of his neck. “You’re sure she’s innocent?”

“Yes!”

Pat jumps, looks around the restaurant. The guy in the next booth over’s wanks stop momentarily, but they then pick back up. An hour straight. Very impressive. 

“Okay,” he carefully says, his words practically a minefield at this point. “I believe you. But you’ve gotta understand, Brian, she’s still a suspect. I can’t just not do my job.”

Brian gives him the puppy eyes again. “But…”

“‘But nothing.” Pat sighs, lets his fingers tangle themselves in his hair, tugging slightly. He closes his eyes, shakes his head, looks again and almost closes them when he catches sight of the puppy eyes again.

“Look, I’m sure she didn’t do it. I’m sure that once I interview her, she’ll be proven innocent and you two can go home and do whatever it is you do.”

Brian nods, mostly to himself. 

“Yeah,” he softly says, again, mostly to himself. “Okay.”

A small alarm begins to go off in Pat’s brain at the tone of Brian’s voice. He’s heard that tone many times, mostly from himself before the trial when he was considering pulling a Bonnie and Clyde and running down to Illinois. 

“Brian,” he warns. “No shenanigans.”

Brian smiles a bit and crosses his fingers. “No shenanigans. Promise.”

-

Pat used to be the shenanigans king in high school. Every week or two, he and his friends would steal spray paint out of the art room supplies closet and desecrate the holiest of grounds: the overpass a mile away from town. Sometimes, when they were feeling lucky, they’d break into Pat’s dad’s church and replace every hymnal with random books that the library was conveniently missing, all on Pat’s cousin’s card. When by himself, Pat would head down to the church early and fuck with the letters on the sign outside by the road. No one ever commented on it except his family, but the rush of pure life energy he got every time he wrote “ass” next to Jesus’ name was absolutely worth every drop of blood spilled in the yard that night. 

He was going to become a mechanic, maybe. Or maybe he would go join the Air Force. He hadn’t decided. But, as soon as he graduated high school, his parents gave him an ultimatum: seminary or military. He chose the one he was sure he could run away from.

Night one, he grabbed his wallet, slipped out his window and went into the city certain he’d be catching a bus out of Maine and into the big, wide world he was supposed to be exploring. And he did. He fell asleep in his seat and woke up a couple of miles outside of Boston. And from there, he hopped onto another bus and rode the line all the way to New York City. And he never looked back.

-

“Is it supposed to be this...green?” Pat asks, eyeing the victim’s neck warily. 

“Nope!” Simone replies, chipper, still working her way up to the head from the legs. The calves down are missing, sitting on a separate table a few feet away along with the arms and half the head. 

Brian’s on the other side of the room nursing a glass of water like a lifeline, sitting on a stool facing the wall. The intern’s next to him trying to finagle the stool away so she can use it to reach a box of knives on a shelf fifteen feet up the wall. 

The elephant case seemed easy enough at first. Angry, stressed zookeeper Josie Reynalds had snapped and carved an elephant’s stomach open. But then, Reynalds was found a couple of days later in the tiger pit with what seemed to be five different keys stuck in her throat. 

Technically, this is Brian’s case. But Pat took pity on him and went down to the morgue with him. The relieved look on his face was worth all the torment Simone could ever put him through.

“Far as I can tell, it wasn’t even the tiger that did her in,” Simone comments. “There’s a ton of glass all over her insides. It’s kind of pretty, honestly.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Pat drily comments. 

Brian, across the room, gags, and Pat can’t help but shoot him a concerned look. Not like he’d see it, anyway. The intern does, though, and she sighs and bends down to pat Brian’s back. Simone snorts, and Pat just sags. 

“Not a word,” he mutters. 

“Scout’s promise,” she swears, grinning maniacally. 

There’s a groan from the intern, and Pat glances over, surprised to see Brian up and moving closer to him and Simone with his _I think I know what happened_ face on. Hopefully he does, in fact, have it, because Pat doesn’t want to be in here any more than he does. 

Something about blood’s always freaked him out a bit. It’s so important, but it’s also dangerous. Some of Pat’s best friends have died because of “bad blood” in the past couple of years. One time, he got a paper cut and nearly passed out. It’s a wonder he doesn’t go catatonic every time he visits Simone’s domain. 

As soon as Brian walks over, he takes a few faltering steps backward and takes refuge behind Pat. Pat thanks God above for the mask he’s wearing; he doesn’t think he’d ever get over what Simone would be saying if she could see his blush and how it arose from just Brian being less than three feet away.

“I’m gonna need those keys processed,” Brian says, sounding just a few moments away from vomiting. “And the glass, too, if you don’t mind.”

“You know where the forms are,” Simone says, waving her hand a little, glove flicking a bit of blood onto Pat’s shirt. He gags and pulls his shirt away from his body, face wrinkled. She raises her eyebrows. “Whoops! Guess you’ll just need to take off that shirt, Patrick.”

Pat gives her an unimpressed look. “Ha.”

“No, I’m being serious. That shirt’s technically evidence now.”

Pat looks down at his shirt and sighs. Of course, he left his jacket at his desk. Of course, Simone doesn’t have anything he can wear. He doesn’t need to ask, he just knows. Devious little witch. 

He untucks his shirt and starts unbuttoning it as quickly as he can. He crumples it up and tosses it towards the intern, who catches it with the edge of a ruler and drops it into an evidence bag. He crosses his arms, wincing at the cold metal of his watch and of the chain his badge is hanging on pressing against his naked chest, at the fact that he’s going to have to walk back to the precinct like this. With Brian. Who, as Pat looks back out of sheer curiosity, is beet-red and staring firmly at the floor. Pat knows his face is probably the same, and his arms curl tighter around himself. 

“Thanks for reminding me,” he says, giving her a glare to match no other. “Would’ve been a shame if that crucial evidence was ignored.”

“I’m gonna...forms,” Brian sputters. He coughs and rushes out of the room, forgetting it’s a pull door and slamming his head into it before shoving his way through. The intern cackles. 

-

He interviews Laura Gilbert while Brian’s investigating the tiger pit. It’s better this way. Now Brian won’t hop into the interrogation room and kidnap his sister and run off into the sewers with her to live among the rats. Which would be fucking awful because then Pat couldn’t take him up to Maine like he’s been thinking about. Which he wouldn’t do. At all. 

He’d decided to record the interview because, knowing Brian, he’d be interrogating Pat himself over the following days or weeks, and Pat wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment yet. 

He clears his throat with a too-loud cough, making the woman across from him startle a little. She’s small, way smaller than him, even while sitting, but her presence fills the room and spills out under the crack under the door and into the hallway. She’s smiling despite being interrogated by a real hardass, someone who, despite his best attempts, is known around the department for ruthless interrogation that leaves the suspects shaking in their boots. She’s absolutely Brian’s sister; they sort of have the same eyes. And sort of the same face. Sort of. No one can match Brian, though, Pat could tell an imposter from a mile away. 

He clears his throat again, starts the tape recorder, and begins. 

“May 6th, 1983. Please state your name.”

She raises an eyebrow, eyeing the folder in front of him. He gives her his classic _please dear God just get this over with_ look, the one that’s actually what gets people talking. None of the shit the detectives on tv pull. These people don’t want to be in this room any more than he does, and he capitalizes on it every time. 

She sighs and throws her head back. “Laura Kathryn Gilbert, and, whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”

“That’s for us to decide,” he calmly says, putting his official voice on, the one he only pulls out when he’s being recorded, even if it’s him recording himself for Brian’s sake. It’s deeper, smoother. Absolutely fake. “Now, could you tell me where you were the night of March 29th?”

“What’s your name?” Laura - _the suspect_ \- asks instead of answering his question. 

Pat slides his glasses up and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Please just answer the question, ma’am.”

“I want to know who I’m talking to,” she shrugs, way too casual for someone inching their way towards Pat’s bad side. “Gotta know if you’re one of his.”

He slides his notepad closer, clicking his pen. “One of whose?”

“Shorty. You one of his?”

“Who’s ‘Shorty?’”

“Answer my question first.”

“How...I can’t answer your question, Miss Gilbert. I’m the one-”

“God, don’t call me that. Laura. Call me Laura.”

Pat sighs. She’s really too much like Brian. He spent the first couple of months trying to get Pat to loosen up and call him anything other than his last name, eventually giving up around the time Pat realized that, yeah, he could deal with his unwanted feelings and moved on with his life. 

“Fine,” he huffs, twirling his pen between his fingers. “Laura. Ignore Shorty for a moment. Were you on the harbor the night of March 29th?”

“Yep. Me and Jonah, one of my roommates, we were trying to find my brother’s boat. He was at his...friend’s place drinking and called me crying about his boat being stolen. He begged us to go check, and, honestly? I wish that piece of junk would be stolen. I love him to bits, but who the fuck names a boat ‘Sandra’?”

Pat shakes his head. “Don’t know. When you leave, could you give me Jonah’s contact information? I’m going to need to speak with him.”

She shoots him a sharp glare. “Not until I can trust you.”

He raises his hands defensively. “I’m a cop, ma’am. Most trustworthy people in the city.”

“As if. Shorty’s got all you pigs under his thumb.”

A shiver runs down Pat’s spine, leaving the hairs on the back of his neck raised. He swallows the slight fear rising in his throat and checks back over the file just so he can avoid her eyes. 

“Not me, ma’am,” he says, voice shaking just ever so slightly. “I follow my own rules.”

She barks out a laugh. “That’s what they all say. My brother, he said something similar when I asked him.”

He glances up at her over his glasses, which are sliding down his nose. He pushes them back up. “You don’t trust your brother?”

She bites her lip. “I mean, I do. But you gotta be careful, you know? Shorty’s real dangerous.”

“I see.” He sets the file back down and pulls out a photo of Fagan’s yacht when it wasn’t covered in dicks and eyes. He slides it across the table; she pulls it closer and tilts her head a bit with a small smile. “You see this boat before?”

“Boat crime,” she murmurs. She looks up at him. “I was wondering why my brother wasn’t in here. Lemme guess, the case is ‘too personal’?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” he carefully replies. “Please answer the question.”

She sighs and slides the photo back over. “Yeah, I’ve seen it. It’s that dickbag, Fagan’s. Fuck him.”

“Tell me about it,” he mutters, hopefully not getting that on tape. He’s supposed to be professional, dammit. He clears his throat, pointedly ignoring the smirk on her face. “Then I assume you’re aware of what happened to it?”

She hums and nods her head. “‘Course. Brian’s the one who told me all about it.”

His hand shakes as he writes down the information. “Brian’s your brother’s name?”

She holds up her hand, looking down at her purple nail polish; she and Brian are matching today. “I dunno, Patrick, is it?”

He drops his pen with a curse and picks it up, narrowing his eyes at her. “Well, _Miss Gilbert_ , I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“Of course not.”

“Alright.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out, grip on the pen tight. “Let’s just finish up here. So, to recap, you have a credible witness that can prove that you were, in fact, not jacking up our mayor’s yacht, and you, in fact, had nothing to do with this crime whatsoever?”

She hums again, nods again, looks up from her nails with what Pat can now describe as the trademark Gilbert smirk. Lord knows he’s seen it enough times on Brian to commit it to memory. Seeing it on his sister, though, is… actually quite a bit unnerving, if he’s being honest with himself. Which he is. 

He sets his pen on the table and nods, sitting back and crossing his arms. The shirt Simone lent him, a baby-blue monstrosity that’s a size too small, sits tight across his chest. Too tight. A seam in the shoulder pops, and he winces. The suspect smiles. 

“Glad I could help, officer,” she coyly says. She winks the trademark Gilbert wink. Fuck. She’s absolutely telling Brian about the shirt. About how she, a Gilbert, scared him (Brian also scares him, but in a different way).

“I’ll be in touch,” he says. And he clicks the tape recorder off. 

-

Two days later, he and Brian are together on the _S.V. Sandra_ stabbing stuffed elephants with things too sharp for any smart person to be wielding on a boat. There’s a chainsaw leaning against the railing. There shouldn’t be a chainsaw leaning against the railing. Pat can’t find it in himself to care. 

Despite being May, it’s still pretty damn cold. Cold enough for Pat to have two jackets on. Cold enough for Brian’s mustache to be dripping with frost. Cold enough for the elephants to have just about been frozen solid (they dunked them in a tub of water, first, in an attempt to at least reasonably replicate the tough hide of an elephant) after ten minutes. 

Brian swings the screwdriver in his hands down with a battle cry that makes a nearby seagull shit itself. The elephant’s stomach bursts open easily, spraying its fluffy intestines all over the deck. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand, and Pat really kind of wishes that Brian wasn’t wearing three sweaters and a lifejacket so he could’ve seen those muscles at work. He’s fucked. 

“Subject went down too easy,” Brian announces. Pat jots that down in the twelfth column, right under ‘butter knife’ and right over ‘machete’. 

_“It’s science,”_ Brian had said in the call. It was eight in the morning, Pat hadn’t had his coffee yet, and he really didn’t want to go in and deal with the large group of clowns that Clayton was set to be interrogating. So he had followed Brian’s directions: gather literally anything sharp he owns, wear warm clothes, bring breakfast, and head down to Brian’s boat on the harbor. And so here he was: cold, nauseous, turned on, and exhausted. He wasn’t supposed to be turned on. Isn’t. Isn’t going to be. Thoughts of Ronald Fagan naked pop into his mind, and Pat, for once, is glad to see that slimy bastard’s face. 

At least the boat wasn’t that attractive. The _Sandra_ is painted bright orange, white trim framing the deck and sitting place (Pat doesn’t know what the parts of a boat are called, and he really doesn’t care). There are two large eyes on either side of the bow, big and cartoony and pure black, the only color being a fiery red pupil in each. On the side, in large, flowing letters, is _S.V. Sandra_. Currently across her messy deck are the guts of many a slain elephant along with six different types of knives, a chainsaw, an ax, a machete, a hammer and chisel, Pat’s roommate’s razor, a handsaw, a letter opener, a rake, and a tiny screwdriver the size of Pat’s pinky. 

Pat nods and hands Brian the machete. Their fingers brush, and Pat shivers at the cold of Brian’s hands. 

“You sure you don’t want to borrow my gloves?” he asks, already pulling them off. 

Brian jumps and stabs the air with the machete. Pat flinches. Brian drops the machete with a clatter.

“Uh,” Brian says, quickly shoving his hands into his pockets He smiles wanly and shakes his head. “I’m good, thanks.”

Pat, seeing the obvious blue tint to Brian’s wrists, raises an eyebrow and holds out his gloves. “Can’t have your pretty little fingers falling off.”

He immediately regrets everything and snaps his mouth shut so fast and so hard that he swears he feels a tooth crack. _Pretty fingers_ , what the fuck? Even if he was trying to flirt, which he wasn’t - not consciously, anyway - he wouldn’t say that. It’s creepy! Weird! Brian should be stabbing him with the screwdriver, not...laughing?

“Why, Patrick,” Brian giggles, eyes crinkling up on the edges. “is that how you speak to all the ladies?”

“Uh,” Pat says. He waves the gloves a little. “Gloves?”

Brian huffs out a sigh, breath gathering in front of his face and landing on his mustache. He shakes his head, picks up the machete and gives a practice swing. Then, he grabs an elephant off of the deck, bouncing it in his hand before tossing it in the air and swinging the machete down, missing wildly. The undamaged elephant falls to the deck with a thud. 

“Brian, your hands are blue.”

“We’re almost done,” Brian says, picking the elephant back up. His fingers seem to struggle to curl around the machete’s handle again, movements slow and sluggish. “I’ll be fine.”

“Bullshit.”

Pat closes the couple of feet between them and plucks the machete out of his hand, dropping it onto the deck next to them. Brian’s protests are quickly turned into silence as Pat claps both of his hands around Brian’s. Thank God it’s cold enough for Pat to excuse his blush for the air biting at his cheeks. Thank God Brian can use the same excuse later on when they’re warming up in beside the heater outside of the file room. Pat doesn’t think he’d be able to handle if Brian didn’t. 

Brian’s hands are too small, Pat thinks, desperately trying to not think about how close they are. How, with one duck of the head, they could be…

“God, you’re hot,” Brian comments after just long enough of awkward silence for Pat to begin thinking of excuses to jump into the ocean. Brian’s ears, which are barely visible under his hat, are tinted the same blazing red as his cheeks. “Warm, I mean. Warm.”

Pat nods slightly. The lump in his throat chokes his words, clipping them. “Gloves. They’re hot.”

“Hot gloves,” Brian mutters. “Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

It’s late enough in the morning that the fishermen are all out at sea already, early enough that casual boaters are at work or class. It’s just them out on the water, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. They’re alone. Pat could say _it_ and hope that Brian says _it_ back, and no one would be there if they kissed, and no one would know if they said _it_ and went with it and finished the experiments with smiles on their faces and _it_ in their eyes. They’re alone. Pat could say _it_ and Brian could push him off the boat and let him drown, or Brian could find it in his heart to let Pat down easy, or Brian could stab him with the nearby machete.

The sound of an ambulance siren startles them apart, Pat jumping back a good couple of feet and almost tipping backward over the railing and into the sea. He swallows the vomit rising in his throat and stands, firmly staring at the dissected corpse of an elephant at his feet. 

“H-hand me the machete, please, Patrick,” Brian says, voice distant. Maybe it’s him, or maybe it’s the fact that Pat’s mind is far away in a world where he didn’t do exactly what he did. 

Pat nods and hands the machete over, fingers brushing against Brian’s now-warm hands. He shivers and pulls his gloves back on; Brian was right, they’re almost done. He’ll be fine. And then they can go back to work and never speak of this again. 

He looks back up and goes back to observing.

Brian repeats the machete process, actually nailing the swing this time. The elephant spills open, guts spewing all over Pat’s boots. 

“Huh,” Brian says. He grabs another elephant and swings. And another. And another. He goes through the remaining two elephants and looks down at the fluff-coated machete with a look that just screams I think I know what happened. And, this time, Pat thinks that he does.

-

“May eighth, 1983,” Pat narrates, tapping his pen idly against his notepad. “Please state your name.”

“James O'Leary,” says the man sitting across from him. 

O’Leary was at the bottom of the list of suspects, only there because he apparently was seen at the same hardware store the spray paint was bought at, and Pat’s really, really not looking forward to this. The guy reminds Pat too much of his father: small and angry with a beard that wishes it could reach Lincoln standards. He’s dressed like he just rolled out of bed, and he looks it, too, with half his hair pressed flat and his eyes bleary. Or maybe he’s just high. 

“Could you tell me where you were on the night of March 29th?”

O’Leary seems to roll the question around in his head, his eyes going crossed. “Was with my girlfriend. Date night. We went out for pizza, went home, fucked.”

Pat nods and writes that down. “Who’s your girlfriend?”

“Josie.”

He sighs. “Josie who?”

“Josie.”

He shoots O’Leary the look; O’Leary blinks slowly and nods. “Josie Reynalds.”

Pat’s pen stops and he can practically hear the record scratch. 

“Would you mind giving me Josie’s contact information?”

“Don’t need to. We share a phone. We live together.”

Pat nods and jots something down for Brian.

_Look at James O’Leary. Susp_

He clears his throat. “It’s to my understanding, Mr. O’Leary, that Miss Reynalds is not...able to be contacted at the moment. Is that correct?”

O’Leary sinks back in his chair, picks at a cuticle. “No, she’s fine. We talked last night.”

“Right,” Pat says. “Of course, my bad. Must’ve been thinking of someone else.”

“Must’ve.”

Now, Pat knows that this is not his case. It’s crossing dangerously close into Brian’s, and he really doesn’t want to work on two cases at once tonight. One’s hard enough when Brian’s just across the table from him. 

“Back to the case,” Pat coughs. “Why were you at Nuts and Bolts that day?”

“Getting stuff for work.”

“Where do you work?”

“Zoo.”

-

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Pat ducks as yet another desecrated elephant plush is tossed over his head and into the bathroom. Why they’re going into the bathroom to die is a mystery. Something about scaring the shit out of Pat’s roommate, which, honestly, is fine by him. Fucker keeps getting upset over missing wine. It isn’t missing; it’s in Pat and Brian’s bodies slowly killing them. 

“I’m being serious,” Pat says, continuing his long journey to finish transcribing the interrogation tapes. An empty mug sits next to his notepad, just begging to be refilled. “I think O’Leary killed your zookeeper.”

“I mean, no shit,” Brian says. He pitches another elephant, nearly nailing Charles in the nose. He immediately drops to his knees and offers repentant scratches; Charles deigns to acknowledge him. Pat smiles fondly, too fondly, but whatever. It’s not like Brian’ll remember it as anything other than drunken affection in the morning. “Question is if...if...aw, Charlie, noooo!”

He whines and reaches out a hand as Charles gets bored and moves on to go eat one of the elephants’ ears. Pat’s smile grows as Brian lifts his head to look at him, pouting. 

“Your cat’s homophobic,” Brian whimpers. 

A flash of...something lights up in Pat’s chest, filling his entire body with a strange mixture of dread and hope. He’s sure his face is doing something weird, and his brain’s going a million miles an hour.

He shakes his head. “Nah. He loves us fags.”

Fuck. _Fuck_. 

Brian’s face does something strange, relaxing yet tensing at the same time. He shifts from his knees to lying down completely, leaning on his elbows, his head in his hands. His head tilts. His face is carefully blank.

“Oh?” he asks. “Your cat is very tolerant.”

“Yep,” Pat says, willing his voice to be as stoic as ever. Panic will set him off. “Real good cat.”

“Very nice.”

“Oh, yeah. Love him.”

“Who else do you-”

The tape gets to O’Leary saying, _“Yeah. We were gonna paint the elephants’ pen for her birthday. Josie loves elephants,”_ and Pat slams his pen on the table and picks up the bottle of wine, refilling his mug, because he cannot deal with this. 

After the interview, Pat had ended up at the zoo talking with various zookeepers he saw around the elephant pen. Apparently, O’Leary’s a janitor whose preferred areas are the areas around the elephant pen and the tiger pit. He’s been pissy at work since the elephant’s death, and even more upset since Reynalds’. When she was alive, the two of them never spoke to each other, but he asked about her every day she took off. Half the time he shows up to work high, and the other half the time he’s coming down off of a high. 

And he had gotten Brian a tiny plush turtle.

“Do you think Josie knew she was going to paint the pen?” Brian asks, and there’s another thing that Pat can never get over. Pat prefers the disconnect from the people involved. It makes it easier to process. But Brian hasn’t done that yet, not with any of the cases they’ve worked together. Maybe the disconnect is easier for him. Maybe it’s easier for him to see the victims as the corpses they really are, the suspects as possible criminals. 

Pat shakes his head, refilling both of their mugs. “Absolutely not.”

Brian gets on all fours and crawls over, resting his arms on Pat’s lap. He reaches up for his mug, apparently not noticing Pat’s sudden tenseness. He takes a long sip, staring Pat in the eyes as he does so. 

“Do you think this means I’ll get to work on the boat case again?” he asks. He places his mug on the floor and drops his head onto his arms, closing his eyes. 

“Probably not,” Pat says, voice strangled, fingers finding their ways to Brian’s hair despite his best attempts to just sit still. Brian hums, melodic, and Pat squeezes his eyes shut as tight as they can get. This isn’t happening. He’s going to open his eyes, and Brian’ll be sitting at the table across from him doing the work that they’ve been avoiding for the past while. 

“But, like, Laura didn’t even do it,” Brian says. “We decided that, right? She’s got an alibi.”

“This is a Tara question, not a Patrick question.”

“But it’s your case. I share with you. You can share with me this time.”

Pat opens his eyes just long enough to pause the tape, chancing a look down at Brian. He looks beautiful, even with his face hidden in what Pat hopes is not his crotch. His hair catches gold in the dull lights of the kitchen, and his shirt is still unwrinkled. He smells faintly of the sea. 

Pat knows he can’t keep this up. It’s exhausting, being someone you aren’t, ignoring yourself entirely in favor of becoming a faint echo of your true self. It wasn’t a problem before. Not since ‘76. Not until now, not until someone had to walk off of the train to New York and into Pat Gill’s fool heart. Pat tried to hate him. He tried for so long, so damn long. From day one until now has been an uphill battle. It isn’t fair. 

Brian sits up and grabs his mug, taking another drink, and Pat pulls his hand away like it’s on fire, which it certainly feels like. His entire body is aflame, and it’s all Brian’s fucking fault. Pat wishes he could hate him. But he would rather die before they could ever reach that point. 

“I’ll see what I can do,” he croaks. He starts up the tape again, Brian resumes his prior position, and Pat spends the rest of the evening with one hand transcribing and the other running through his partner’s hair.

-

He didn’t want to be partners at first. At first he wanted Brian and his stupidly-distracting ass out of his department and across town so he could bother one of those incredibly-closeted detectives. But, no, Tara decided he needed a friend (those were her exact words. “Patrick, you need a friend. No, Charles doesn’t count.”). And so their desks were shoved together, and that was that. 

And, even if they were working on cases together, Pat didn’t want to be officially partners. Just coworkers was fine. Just buddies, maybe, friends. ‘Partner’ had a connotation that he didn’t want affiliated with him, one just that bit too familiar. So, there they were, Gill and Gilbert, buddies of the law. 

Pat still isn’t okay with ‘partner’. Not while he still has that damn stupid feeling in his chest, the one that won’t go away no matter how hard he tries to suffocate it, to get it gone. That’s all he wants: gone. But some stubborn part of him keeps it alive, keeps it kicking just enough for Pat to get all flustered any time he hears the damn word. 

Brian introduced him to a couple of friends once as his partner. Brian introduced himself to Simone as his partner. Brian introduced himself to Pat’s roommate as his partner. 

Pat is Brian’s partner, and he doesn’t know quite how he wants to take that word anymore. 

-

While Brian’s in the interrogation room having a go of his own at O’Leary, Pat sits at his desk and tries to figure out why O’Leary and Reynalds would vandalize Fagan’s yacht. 

According to a couple of zookeepers, Reynalds wasn’t a fan of the mayor. She supposedly had a girl she was talking to up in Massachusetts, but that isn’t confirmed yet. No one knew that girl’s name, or any contact information, so that lead fell through almost immediately. O’Leary, on the other hand, did some contract work for Fagan years ago. Built his deck. Insisted on doing it for free. 

At least he and Brian know that O’Leary killed her. The keys came back from the lab, and, even without the testing done on them, it’s obvious that the keys were his. His supervisor had to give him a new set after the previous set was “stolen” on the same day that Reynalds died. And the glass was from a bottle, a wine bottle, specifically. A cork was found buried beneath a pile of wet leaves right outside the door leading into the tiger enclosure. As far as Brian could tell, it was a failed “date”. O’Leary asked Reynalds out, she said no, and he murdered her and shoved her into the tiger pit to get rid of the evidence. Brian’s in there trying to get an actual confession out of him, but, even without, Pat’s pretty sure O’Leary could get convicted on what Brian’s already got. 

Pat’s main problem is that Reynalds and O’Leary were never seen together outside of work. Hell, they were barely seen together at work. There, as far as he’s decided, was no way they’d be out together buying paint unless it was for the zoo. But even then, it would probably just be O’Leary. He was in charge of that sort of thing; she fed the animals and shit. Unless she was supervising or something. 

Pat crosses out ‘Kidnapping’ and chews on the end of his pen. It’s a bad habit he’s been trying to break after far too many mouthfuls of cheap ink. 

Maybe it was her idea. That’s a possibility. She wanted to go vandalize the mayor’s yacht because he’s a huge douchebag and she’s into women. Brought O’Leary along because it’s easier to pin a crime on a stoned janitor than a cute zookeeper. They had fun, and O’Leary thought he had a chance. He brought the wine a few weeks later after what was absolutely a ton of deliberation and internal arguing, cornered her outside of the tiger pit after her shift, and she turned him down. He shoved the keys down her throat, panicked over her death, and tossed her in to the animals she so very loved, and the wine bottle was thrown in, too, for some reason. 

He finishes writing that mess down and rushes over to the interrogation room. He knocks on the door, out of breath. Brian opens it after a moment and beams. 

“Why, detective! What a pleasant surprise!”

Pat shakes his head and holds up his notepad. “I...I think I figured it out.”

Brian’s eyes widen and he nods, stepping out of the room and closing the door behind him. Pat has to stop a few times to catch his breath as he explains, because he’s old and out of shape, but Brian pays rapt attention. He’s standing so close, so very close, and Pat maybe has to stop a few more times to keep himself from saying something he doesn’t mean. 

Brian nods as soon as Pat’s done explaining. “Okay. Wanna go finish this together?”

Technically, it’s only supposed to be one at a time. But whatever. Pat’s tired and he just wants this fucking boat case over with so he can move onto something more interesting. Like murder. God, he would kill for a good, classic murder about now. 

He nods, and Brian opens the door.

-

_“Sorry for taking off, James.”_

_“That’s fine.”_

_“I’ve got Detective Gill here with me now. He’s gonna help get this done quicker.”_

_“Oh, good. I have to get back to work.”_

_“Of course you do. Now he’s going to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright?”_

_“Mhmm.”_

_A cough, and Detective Gill begins._

_“Now, Mr. O’Leary, it is to my understanding that you and Miss Reynalds are intimately involved. Is that correct?”_

_“Yes, it is.”_

_“When did you two get together?”_

_“Officially? Well, it was about a month or two ago. I told you last time. We went out for pizza, we got some paint for work, and we went back to my place and fucked.”_

_“Right. Well, am I right in assuming that you two have spoken since?”_

_“Yes. We talked last week. Told you.”_

_Detective Gilbert cuts back in._

_“Josie’s dead, James.”_

_“What? No, she ain’t. We talked last week.”_

_“She died two weeks ago.”_

_“No.”_

_“Detective Gill has informed me that he thinks you killed her. Is that true?”_

_“Bri-”_

_“Pat, hush. James, take your time in answering.”_

_“I...I didn’t kill her. We talked last week.”_

_“What did you talk about?”_

_“Things. Pizza, mostly. She likes pizza.”_

_“She was a woman of taste. Do you know how she died?”_

_“She didn-”_

_“Tigers ate her vital organs.”_

_“No. No, they love her. They wouldn’t.”_

_Detective Gill chimes back in._

_“Then it must’ve been the set of keys found in her throat that did her in. You seen your keys lately, Mr. O’Leary?”_

_“Mr. Jackson gave me a new set. Someone stole mine.”_

_“Someone stole your keys and killed Miss Reynalds with them?”_

_“That’s right.”_

_“Now, I thought you said she wasn’t dead?”_

_“I...did I say that?”_

_“Yes, you did.”_

_“That doesn’t sound like something I’d do. I never lie. Ma told me not to.”_

_“I’m sure your ma also told you not to kill girls who turn you down, but you did that, anyway.”_

_“I-”_

_“Now, Pat, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m sure James has a perfectly reasonable explanation.”_

_“I-”_

_“Now, Brian, are you sure? I think he’s just going to keep lying to us.”_

_“I-”_

_“Now, Patrick, I think you’re being a little Judgy Judy here.”_

_“I-”_

_“Now, Brian, I think you’re taking the side of an obviously guilty man. That could get you in big trouble.”_

_“Now, Pat, I-”_

_“I killed her, okay?! Just, God, stop flirting in front of me! Fuckin’ faggots.”_

_“Why, Patrick, I guess I owe you an apology.”_

_There is no reply from Detective Gill._

-

“You know, you never figured out the elephant.”

Brian laughs and takes another bite of his pizza. They’re celebrating the end of the Reynalds case, the end of the Fagan case. While he did manage to get some form of confession out of him, without the main culprit, Reynalds, alive, charges couldn’t exactly be pressed. Fagan dropped the charges and bought a new yacht, sending the old one up north to what has to be his own private shipyard in Connecticut. Two cases down, the weekend off, plenty of time for celebratory pizza. 

“I don’t think she killed it,” Brian says, mouth full. “She couldn’t have. Too big.”

“What, just because she was a woman, she couldn’t kill a bull elephant?” Pat smirks. “Brian, I expected better out of you.”

Brian flushes. “I- no! She couldn’t have killed it because she was a fourth its size and didn’t have the muscle mass to swing a machete with enough force to cut into its skin deep enough to open it up.”

“So...what happened to it?”

Brian grins sharply. “I think it got too frisky with someone and got its just desserts.”

Pat’s smirk grows into a full smile, and he laughs, throwing his head back. The mental image of two elephants fucking to death pops into his mind, and he just about falls out of his chair. 

“So,” he wheezes. “It got penetrated to death?”

Brian breaks out into a wild giggle, and Pat’s heart skips a beat. “Yeah! Holy shit, Pat. Oh, goodness.”

Pat’s sure the other people in the restaurant are tired of them already, and it’s only been half an hour. This place, Tom’s, is his favorite. It’s kind of his special place. It was the first pizza place he went to in his entire life, and it’s saved his life more times than he can count. He hasn’t even brought Tara here, or Simone, or Jeff or Clayton or anyone. Just Brian. It’s fucking expensive, a large pizza being ten bucks, but it’s worth it for the look of pure bliss that appears on Brian’s face after his first bite every time they go here. Funnily enough, Pat hasn’t seen that face yet. Brian’s looked at peace since they left the station together. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Pat thinks he sees someone. Someone with red hair in a blue uniform with a silver band on his right ring finger. But he blinks, and the figure is gone. And that’s probably for the best. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Brian’s smile drops. 

“Why?” he asks. “You’re good, man.”

“My...cat’s homophobic?”

Brian relaxes and puts his pizza down, reaching across the table for Pat’s hand. As soon as they make contact, Pat’s face automatically lights up red. It’s like a thing at this point, an automatic response. He’s too used to it by now. 

“Charles isn’t homophobic,” Brian says, squeezing Pat’s hand. “He loves you.”

Pat’s brain shuts down, and his mouth drops open in shock. He drops his pizza onto the floor, but he can’t move the rest of his body enough to pick it back up. He can feel his chest grow tighter and tighter and tighter and his grip on Brian’s hand is nearly bone-breaking and he really doesn’t think he’d be able to live with himself if he killed the love of his life by breaking his hand in the back of Tom’s Pizza and-

The calm tone of Brian’s voice washes over him like a wave, pulling him back in. 

“Pat, Patrick, hey. You dropped your pizza, buddy.”

Pat nods and picks up the slice with a shaky hand, depositing it back on his plate. He balls his napkin up in his hand and squeezes it like a lifeline. 

“Sorry,” Brian says, looking down at the table, at their joined hands. “You aren’t, uh-”

“Not. Not yet. Waiting.”

“Ah.”

Pat relaxes his grip on Brian’s hand and focuses on his breathing. In, and out. Across the table, Brian’s following along. 

Pat has several questions. How does Brian know? Why is he still at the table with him? Why hasn’t he run off? Why isn’t Pat dead yet? Why does he feel like he’s being watched? 

But he settles on one. 

“Want to, uh. Movie? After this. You haven’t seen _Flashdance_ yet, have you?”

A smile slowly crosses Brian’s face. “I have not.”

Pat jerks his head in a nod, heartbeat still going a million miles per hour. “Uh, cool. I’ll just, uh…”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Brian says. He fishes out his wallet and drops a twenty on the table. “I’ve got it tonight. You can pay next time.”

Pat’s mind closes in on the words _“next time”_ , and he smiles properly for the first time in years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a night so fine it leaves Brian walking on air, he awakens to the city that never sleeps on edge over yet another boat murder. Which is fine. But his partner isn't. 
> 
> It's a race against the clock to solve the case and save the day. 
> 
> But that's fine, because Boat Detective Gilbert is on the case!


	4. Interlude: An Alternate Perspective of Sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pat Gill is beautiful when he’s drunk, Brian thinks, desperately trying to not lunge across Pat’s kitchen table and kiss him into submission. Because, see, they’re only two mugs of cheap wine in and barely into the case and, see, though, Pat Gill is beautiful when he’s drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another commercial break!
> 
> I'm going to warn y'all, this week's gonna be. Fun. I'm not quite done with Case #3 and my lovely beta reader is doing testing, so the actual update might be a bit late. But this is here for now. As always, thanks for reading!

Pat Gill is beautiful when he’s drunk, Brian thinks, desperately trying to not lunge across Pat’s kitchen table and kiss him into submission. Because, see, they’re only two mugs of cheap wine in and barely into the case and, see, though, Pat Gill is beautiful when he’s drunk. 

“I bet she shoved the rings up her ass,” Pat giggles, _giggles!_ , lazy smile turning just sharp enough to send a horrible shiver down Brian’s spine. 

See, Brian’s pretty sure that Pat could be a proper serial killer. He’s got that look about him, something tall, dark, mysterious, blood-curdling. Two pairs of glasses, a leather jacket, a knife on his belt and a gun at his side, fucking vinegar-laced coffee. It all sets his nerves on edge and turns him as on as he can get, and, honestly, that’s exactly the type of guy Brian’s been looking for his entire life. Patrick Gill is either fucking insane or the most badass man he’s ever met. And Brian lives for it.

Brian doesn’t know much about Pat. He knows he’s a cop, he’s thirty, he lives with a doctor, he’s from Maine. He knows he doesn’t like the attention, letting Brian take the credit in the headlines. He knows he likes pizza and orange juice. He knows he went to Woodstock (there're pictures on the mantle of Pat and someone else, another man, with their arms around each other’s shoulders throwing peace signs, and Brian totally isn’t jealous at all). 

He knows Patrick Gill is the straightest motherfucker this side of the Mason Dixon. 

But Brian doesn’t mind. It’s not like this is one of his _oh my God if I don’t kiss him I’ll die_ crushes. This is more like one of his _I just want him to smile at me like this when he’s sober_ crushes. Because Pat Gill’s smile...it’s the most beautiful things Brian’s ever seen. 

Brian smiles and pokes at Charles’ side, cooing at his little grunty-purr-thing. He bends down to give him a little kiss between the ears, and, when he sits up and looks at Pat, he has to stop. Because Pat’s practically glowing in the soft, flickering light of the lights above the table. His hair’s dark, but just a tiny little halo at the top is golden-brown, and his pale skin is tinted the slightest shade of yellow and his eyes are wide and his mouth is open like he’s seeing something impossible for the first time. 

Brian feels the back of his neck heat up, and he reaches a hand back to rub at it awkwardly. “Uh. Are we sure about the ass thing?”

Pat coughs and nods, looking back down at the table, and whatever spell had taken effect is over. 

He laughs, sounding just that side of feral, that laugh that Brian knows and adores. “Brian, I’m always sure about the ass thing.”

Brian knows he’s fucked when his own fucking name is enough to make his heart skip a beat. Because Pat, he always insists on formalities. It’s always “Detective Gilbert” or plain old “Gilbert”, and he always insists on Brian calling him “Detective Gill” or plain old “Gill”. But Brian always ignores it, and Pat always takes it with a sharp glance or, as of late, eye roll or soft nudge when they’re close enough. 

Brian smiles. “I forgot you’re the ass man.”

Pat sits up and sticks his chest out proudly, giving a mini-salute. “I am the ass man.”

“You are the ass man,” says Pat’s roommate as he walks into the room from the hall outside, dropping his briefcase by the counter and toeing off his shoes. He gives Brian a once-over and gives Pat a look that Brian can’t quite make out. “Keep it down. Some of us would rather not listen to murder and shit all night.”

Pat gives a thumbs up and a smile, and Brian gives a shy wave. The roommate trudges off to the bathroom, and Pat groans and leans forward, resting his head in his hands. 

“I need a new roommate,” he mutters.

Brian briefly thinks of offering the tiny back room in the apartment, the one behind the bathroom that they’ve been keeping their music shit in. But he quickly shuts that down when the mental image of Pat Gill in the kitchen pouring a bottle of vinegar into a cup of coffee in just his underwear pops into his head. 

“I’m sure you’ll find that special someone,” Brian says, wincing almost immediately. _Read the room, Gilbert._

Pat looks up, looking absolutely pathetic with wide, tired eyes and circles under his eyes and nose and cheeks tinted red. “You think so?”

And Brian ignores the rising feeling in his chest and nods. “Of course. You’re a great guy, Pat Gill. Anyone’d be lucky to live with you.”

“Even you?”

Brian desperately tries to melt into the floor because Pat looks serious. So serious. And they’re only two drinks in! 

“Y-yeah,” he stammers. “Of course.”

Pat blinks and grins, reaching over the table to take Brian’s hand and shake it. “Got it. If I don’t find someone else by the time Daniel moves out, you move in.”

Brian’s hand is limp in Pat’s, but he manages a weak nod. “Yeah.”

Pat shakes his hand one last time and settles back, refilling his mug and sticking his head back into the case file. 

Brian takes the papers in front of him with shaking hands and stares at the words taunting him. 

_“Stolen: two weddings rings”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a night so fine it leaves Brian walking on air, he awakens to the city that never sleeps on edge over yet another boat murder. Which is fine. But his partner isn't.
> 
> It's a race against the clock to solve the case and save the day.
> 
> But that's fine, because Boat Detective Gilbert is on the case!


	5. He is very tired

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know you didn’t do it. You’re a sweet guy, Pat Gill. You couldn’t kill a man if you wanted to.”
> 
> Pat dryly laughs. “You sure about that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. Hello. Greetings. Please pay attention to the tags because this fic is going to get...fun...from now on. And the last thing I wanna do is make y'all upset. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the update! Thanks, as always, for reading! :)

When Brian was a smaller boy than he currently is, he snuck out into the woods with his best friend and kissed him under the pale moonlight. Him and Henry, they were only eight, but they knew what they were doing. They weren’t idiots; their parents did the deed all the time.

He hasn’t kissed many boys since. Mostly ‘cause it’s still illegal, like, everywhere back home, and it’s barely legal in New York. There’s been Tim and Vernon, Jody and Frankie, but he hasn’t wanted to kiss anyone more than he wants to kiss Patrick Gill. 

It’s a constant thing, the want. He first laid eyes on him and had immediately wanted to know what the inside of Pat’s mouth tasted like. He got up to the detectives’ room and pushed their desks together and had wanted to kiss that frown until it was upside-down. They had held hands on Brian’s boat, and they were _so fucking close_. And, as they walk back to Brian’s place after going to see _Flashdance_ , Brian wants to end the night properly. 

“So...” he begins, trailing off when Pat doesn’t acknowledge him, instead staring flatly down at the cracked sidewalk. 

The movie wasn’t bad. Dinner beforehand wasn’t bad, only fucked up by Brian, well, fucking up. Some part of him’s convinced they only went to the movie because Pat felt pressured. He probably was pressured. Pressured to go, pressured to put his arm behind Brian’s seat in the back of the theater where no one could see them if they did end up canoodling, pressured to walk Brian home instead of letting him take the subway, pressured to be near him at all after what he pulled. Accidentally outing someone isn’t...fun. Never is. Never worth it. If someone from work was around…

Brian swallows and decides to follow Pat’s example, watching the walk beneath them shift with the sharp lines of the city. An ambulance sounds off, and so does a cop car or two, and Brian sighs with the knowledge that he and Pat are probably going to be called in tomorrow. He hates working weekends. 

“Can we just agree that we are not going in tomorrow?” Pat asks, and Brian smiles and shakes his head. 

“Tara’ll find us and drag us in,” he says. Because she will. She’s done it before. After their first late-night session, they both passed out on Pat’s kitchen table. Ten minutes after sunrise, Tara came in through the window and poured the previous night’s dirty dishwater on them with a cry of, ‘Get the fuck up, losers’. God, he loves her.

“Nah,” Pat says, shaking his head. “It’s the weekend. The rookies can take this one.”

“But-”

“I’ll fight her.”

Now, Brian hasn’t seen Pat Gill fight. But it can’t have happened. He’s too...noodly. It’s adorable. Brian maybe loves it (no ‘maybe’ about it, actually, he knows he does). But the mental image of Pat whipping out a baseball bat Yakuza-style and breaking Tara’s kneecaps before pushing her off the Golden Gate Bridge is enough to make Brian laugh. Maybe he should go back to therapy. 

Brian wraps his hand around Pat’s bicep, looks up at him, flutters his eyelashes. “My hero.”

Pat coughs and looks back down at the ground, the barest hint of a smile on his face. Even in the dull light cast by the broken-down street lamps, Brian can see his blush. 

To be honest, maybe Brian doesn’t want to kiss Pat Gill. Not yet. Not until he can see him smile properly at him, not until he can know they can do it without getting shot or arrested or shot or arrested or...not until he knows it’s time. And he’ll know when it’s time. Brian’s got a feeling about these things. 

-

“Got another boat crime for you,” Tara says. 

Brian jumps and nearly spills his coffee, spinning around in his chair and flashing her a genuine smile.

“Great!” he says. He cranes his neck to look over her shoulder and at Pat’s desk. He still isn’t there, hasn’t been all morning. It’s noon now, and Brian’s maybe starting to worry. Was the movie that bad? Well, yes it was. It was, but it didn’t seem like… “Where’s Pat? He’ll need to hear it, too.”

Tara sighs and shakes her head. “Let’s walk and talk, Gilbert.”

Brian tilts his head and almost argues, but the look on her face stops him. It’s pity. So he nods and puts stands, following her down the stairs and outside the building. 

“So-”

“You have to promise me you aren’t personal with him,” Tara interrupts. Brian almost asks who, but then he realizes that he doesn’t have to. There’s no one else he really talks to. A brief flash of panic hits him, but he swallows it and shakes his head. 

“I’m not,” he says, and she sighs. 

“Good.” Tara nods. She pulls the file out from under her arm and opens it, handing it over. 

A quick glance-through is enough to send Brian’s heart a-thumpin’. Scuffle on a boat ends in murder. Victim shot in the head, right temple, specifically. Victim is twenty-nine-year-old Jim Horace, and the name sends a little bell in Brian’s head tingling. He busted Horace a few years back as a uniform. Well, Jeff did. Man was stealing police uniforms. Also might be the same guy from the Penny case a few months back, but Brian chose to forget most of that case immediately after shoving its file into the cabinet and going to cry at McDonald’s. He’ll have to look into that, despite his best wishes. It otherwise all seems fine, pretty open-and-shut. Until. Until Brian sees the suspects on the next page, a single name listed. 

“Oh,” he softly says, the panic rising back up and beating his brain in. He takes a breath in, lets it out, following the pattern he and Pat had going on the night before. 

Suspect found a few feet away from the victim’s boat, unconscious. Found with a badge around his neck, blood staining his jacket and shirt and pants and everything. 

“You two aren’t personal. You barely speak to each other,” Tara orders. She’s walking faster, and he’s having to struggle to keep up. “You have two weeks until the trial.”

“Uh, okay,” he says, panic jumping out his throat and settling itself on his tongue. “What happened? Is he okay?”

She sniffs and shakes her head. “He’s fine, Brian. Won’t talk to anyone, though. This was supposed to be Russ’ case, but he won’t talk. But I’m pretty sure he’ll make an exception for you.”

“Right,” he mutters. “Yeah.”

“Hey,” she says, slowing down and looking at him. Sometimes it’s hard to believe she’s the hardened police chief she is. God knows Pat looks the role better, but maybe Brian’s just a little bit biased. “You’re the best. You can figure it out. Just don’t let anyone know about you two. You boys are too close. And we don’t want a repeat of the last case, do we?”

The look on her face sends a shiver down Brian’s spine, and he nods. Sometimes it’s too easy to believe she’s the hardened police chief she is. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, and she nods and turns around, leading the way back down to the station. 

“I’m keeping him in holding until the trial,” she says. “He’ll be available for interrogation at any time. Don’t abuse this, Gilbert.”

He nods again and skims back over the case again. Police-issue gun, the suspect’s prints on the gun, the victim’s prints on the gun. The suspect drunk. In the back of his mind, Brian knows that this is not his fault. He didn’t go drinking. He would’ve had to go by himself after the movie got out, would’ve had to go drinking at two in the morning, and that is definitely not his style. 

He’s got this. Brian’s got this. _They’ve_ got this. It’ll be fine.

-

It is not fine. Because the moment Brian sees Pat Gill asleep in the holding cell, he just about falls to his knees and curses God. Instead, he just curses God and bangs on the bars of the cell with his empty coffee mug, sending Pat to the hard floor with a groan. He curls up in a ball and covers his ears. 

Pat’s in someone else’s clothes. Ratty yellow t-shirt, khaki shorts, bright teal rainboots, most likely all scavenged from the lost and found downstairs. His glasses are on the other side of the cell along with a book and a half-eaten donut. His hair is stringy and clumped together, and his scruff is more...scruffy than usual. And he still looks more attractive than any other man on the planet. 

Brian swallows his many, many curses and squats down outside of the cell, smacking the fakest, brightest smile he has in his inventory on his face. 

“Hey, buddy,” he says, trying to sound as cheerful as anyone who isn’t looking at the love of their life inside of a jail cell would sound. “Wakey-wakey. Gotta ask you some questions.”

Pat groans again and peeks out at Brian from under his hair, face somewhat brightening. “Hey.”

“You look like shit, Gill,” he murmurs. “What happened?”

“Drank too much,” Pat huffs, slowly unfurling himself and pulling himself to a sitting position. Every move he makes results in a wince, every bone pop results in a quiet moan that Brian would love to hear in literally any other situation. His movements are slow, sluggish, not something that’s normal, not even when Pat’s hung over and exhausted. Not quite deliberate, but not quite natural, either. 

Pat shuffles himself closer to Brian and leans against the bars there, hand just close enough to a gap for Brian to reach through and squeeze it. And he does, and he lets it stay there, lets it give Pat the warmth he so desperately needs. Because Pat’s freezing. His hands are tinged a light pink, and they’re moving slower than the rest of his body. 

Brian settles himself on the ground, also leaning against the bars. Some of Pat’s hair brushes against his cheek; he’s been growing it out. It’d be nicer if it didn’t smell faintly of metal and booze.

“Oh, Patrick, you’re going to be the death of me,” Brian says, thumb rubbing tiny circles into the side of Pat’s hand. “I’ve got two weeks to keep you out of prison, you know.”

“I know. Tara came in and yelled at me.”

Brian snorts. Sounds like her. 

“I just came in to say ‘hi’,” he says. “Interrogation’s gonna be later. I just…”

“I’m sorry,” Pat says. He turns Brian’s hand over and traces the lines in his palm. “About last night. That movie sucked.”

Brian thinks back to the movie, or what he can remember of it. It isn’t much. He mostly spent the whole time concentrating on Pat’s arm around his shoulders, on his smile every time the dog appeared on the screen. On Pat in general. They’re going to need a better movie next time. If there’s a next time. 

“I wasn’t paying that much attention to the movie,” Brian smirks, laughing a bit as Pat’s face slowly turns as red as Brian’s nail polish. 

“Oh,” he coughs, and Brian knows that cough by now. It’s his classic _I’m very embarrassed by something that you or I just did so please drop it before my head explodes and I die of head loss_ look, a look that Brian has something very similar to. But he saves his look for whenever he accidentally flirts in public. Pat’s is reserved for whenever he or Brian say anything to each other. It’s adorable. Brian fucking loves how adorable Pat Gill is, from his looks to his cat to his unending enthusiasm for wrestling to his, well, everything. Brian fucking loves everything about Pat Gill, maybe. 

“Yeah.” He smiles. “We’ll have to find a more interesting movie next time.”

“I…” Pat sighs, running a hand through his, frankly, disgusting hair. He swallows and pulls his knees to his chest. “I don’t think there’ll be a next time, Brian.”

Brian shakes his head. “Two weeks from now.”

“Brian…”

“Pat Gill, you one of the most important people in my life. There’s a snowball’s chance in Hell that I’m letting you go to prison for something you didn’t do.”

Pat looks up at him, and Brian can see the blood stains in his beard. His pupils are dilated slightly (look into that, may be sign of drugging, may be exhaustion, may be…), his eyes bloodshot. A corner of his mouth refuses to catch up with the rest of his face. One of his teeth, right canine, is missing.There’s blood under his nose, and the nose itself is crooked, maybe broken, definitely not...normal. He looks more pathetic now than Brian’s ever seen him, and he’s seen him half-naked and drunk trying to lure Charlie out from the fire escape convinced he was trying to run away. 

“But…” Pat takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “What if I did do it? What then?”

Brian bites his lip. “I mean, you didn’t. You were with me all night.”

“Until two. And then I met up with him and…” he trails off with a shudder, squeezing Brian’s hand once before pulling away, wrapping his arms around his knees and resting his chin on his arms. 

“Okay,” Brian nods. He stares down at the empty cup in his hand. “Uh, is there anything I can get you? You hungry?”

Pat shakes his head. “Tara brought me breakfast.”

“I can run and grab lunch. There’s that new Burger King down the street.”

“I’m fine. I, uh.” He laughs a little, sounding just the tiniest bit manic. Brian doesn’t blame him a bit, though he does scoot away a couple of inches. “I really shouldn’t eat anything right now.”

“Right. Drugs.”

Pat jumps, banging the back of his head against the bars. He rubs the back of his head and glares at Brian. 

“Excuse me?” he demands. 

Brian shrugs, making a tiny note in his head. Definitely ask Simone to check for drugs. Though that might take too long. Though maybe Pat could...yeah, okay, when it’s time. He still needs to confirm the body’s time of death. Maybe Pat wasn’t even there. Maybe it was while they were at the movie or at dinner. Even though the gun was police issue. Even though he was found in the street covered in blood, unconscious, just a few short feet from the boat. 

For now, he shrugs a second time and smiles. “Just a joke, man. Chill.”

Pat narrows his eyes at him, but he eventually settles back down. He closes his eyes and leans his head back against the bars. 

“I’ll be back tonight.” Brian smiles, knowing that it isn’t seen. It’s more for him than for Pat. It’s calming, a little. Enough to keep him from breaking down in a panic like his body wants him to. “With dinner. We’ll start questioning tomorrow.”

“There’s no point,” Pat mumbles. The side of his face closest to Brian twitches a few times, and Brian frowns. “I think I did it, Bri.”

“‘Think’ being the key word here, Pat. You don’t know.”

“I don’t _remember_ ,” Pat clarifies, and Brian pulls out his handy-dandy notebook and pen from his back pocket and makes a note to go on a drug-search down by the docks. Grab Laura, maybe, she knows her way around there better than he does. Maybe Jonah, make a day out of it. Maybe look at wherever it was Pat and Horace were drinking at, once Brian gets that out of him. 

“See? You might not have even done it.”

“‘Might’?” 

Panic laces Pat’s words, stronger with every moment. Brian pulls his tie off and shoves it through the bars and towards Pat, who takes it and balls it up and squeezes. He himself squeezes his pen’s grip like a lifeline, because it is. He can’t be taken off this case. 

“I’ll need that back before I go,” he says, only continuing when Pat nods. “And, uh, sorry. I know you didn’t do it. You’re a sweet guy, Pat Gill. You couldn’t kill a man if you wanted to.”

Pat dryly laughs. “You sure about that?”

When they first met, Pat looked like he could kill a man. He looked at Brian like he personally killed his parents, he wore two pairs of glasses, his eyes had bags under them as big as the fancy paper ones Brian sometimes springs for at the store when it’s his turn to get groceries. He looks dangerous, terrifying. Brian was into it. And he’s into it now, for better or for worse. But now he knows that Pat only likes to kill bugs when they’re crawling over his kitchen table. And maybe his roommate when he’s being a bastard. He almost cried when he stepped on Charles’ tail too hard. And, while Brian doesn’t know the relation between him and Jim Horace, he knows that manslaughter is out of the question. 

“I’m certain. You’ll be out of here by the end of the week. Then I’m taking you out.”

Pat’s mouth quirks up in a smile. “I thought that was next week.”

Brian laughs and stands, bones popping. Pat cracks an eye open and holds Brian’s tie out through the bars; Brian takes it and repositions it around his neck. 

“See you at five,” he says, flashing a bright smile. He blows a kiss, shakes his head at Pat’s incredibly obvious blush, and turns and leaves before anyone could see and say anything. 

-

Brian saw his first dead body when he was five. It wasn’t much. Just his grandma, and she was super old. Like, over fifty. Brian was sure his mom was going to be next, her about to turn thirty-something. But it wasn’t her. 

He was in the car when it crashed, him and Laura and Patrick all on their way back from swimming lessons, and Brian still can’t look at a semi without feeling pricks on the back of his neck, without hearing the sounds of metal scraping and Laura screaming. 

Brian saw his second dead body when he was eight. It was a foot away from him, eyes wide and mouth open mid-scream. A shard of glass the size of Brian’s arm went through the mouth and came out his left eyeball and kept going until it met the roof. But, of course, he doesn’t remember it any time other than too late at night when he’s far too sober for his insomniac bullshit. 

Instead, he remembers the night in the hospital, sharing a room with his siblings, his mom sitting in a chair between his bed and Laura’s. Patrick was in another room (he was sitting up front and got a dashboard to the face), and all Brian remembers is wanting to see him. Wanting to see his dad, where was his dad? Wanting some ice cream because his throat hurt. Wanting his bear because his brain hurt and his dad always told him to hold onto Pickles when his brain hurt, just like the doctor said, and Brian still doesn’t know where that damn bear went (it was in the car, of course it was, he was scared of the deep end of the pool and needed his Pickles for the drive there and back). 

He remembers the sick smell of blood and burnt rubber and smoke. 

It’s funny, him becoming a cop. He was supposed to be a barber. Barbers don’t deal with death and bullshit. Barbers don’t deal with homicide and suicide and whatever-icide. He was supposed to be a barber and settle down and stay a very eligible bachelor for the rest of his life. But then he read a paper in ‘78, read how fucking weird the case was, and something clicked. 

He sucks it up when he’s in the field. Well, he mostly saves the puking and panicking until he’s far enough away from the action that his anxiety lets him go through what he has to go through. And then he sucks it up and goes back out to the body, to his fellow officers. To Pat, who gives him a concerned once-over before allowing him to get back to work. The morgue, though. He’s never going to get over that place. Simone reminds him of his middle school's librarian. Miss Applegate always carried a knife on her person and smiled just a tad too wide when he returned his books late. He thought she was a serial killer. And he’s convinced Simone is. Or Jenna is. Or they’re both working together to go on a killing spree down in Jersey or up in the Village, probably starting with him. Which is fine by him as long as he doesn’t have to watch. 

Walking into the morgue always reminds him of the hospital. Too clean, too white, too sterile. Not to mention the _millions_ of dead bodies that have passed in and out over the years. Brian’s seen hundreds since he moved to the city, dozens more since he made detective. Some of them are “pretty”. One, a poisoning victim, looked almost like she was asleep. But others, like Terry Penny or Josie Reynalds, leave a sour taste in his mouth every time he even thinks about heading over. Or when he thinks about his job in general. Maybe he really does need to go back to therapy. 

-

Brian hasn’t been to the morgue by himself before, and it’s a strange feeling, walking through the double doors without his double. Partner. Pat. Fuck. 

The dulcet tones of Jimmy Page color the air today, highlighted by Jenna dancing around a table handling a scalpel like a microphone. Simone’s nowhere in sight, which is weird. Brian’s never not seen her here; he’s pretty sure she lives in one of the body drawers. The only body out today is Jim Horace, and half the lights are off. 

Brian clears his throat, and Jenna spins around and points the scalpel at him with a slightly more deranged look than usual in her eyes. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, raising his hands and flashing a smile that he’s sure looks fake. He’s tired, sue him. “Is Simone in?”

Jenna shakes her head and pockets the scalpel, ignoring what Brian is sure is at least one OSHA violation in the process. 

“Flu,” she says. She tilts her head towards the body. “That one yours?”

Brian winces. “Yeah...sort of. I’m just here for the time of death.”

Jenna deflates at that, slumping over. The scalpel’s tip pokes out from over the edge of her lab coat’s pocket. Something dark stains it, and Brian takes a tentative step backward, bumping into the door. 

She crosses her arms and leans against Horace’s table, her hand between his bare feet. “Where’s Detective Gill? Isn’t he, like, your partner?”

Brian winces and rubs the back of his neck, grimacing. “Yeah, that’s the problem. See…”

Jenna stops paying attention halfway through his explanation, shoving a mask towards him and going to Simone’s desk to see if she can find the autopsy report (apparently Simone went home sick not even an hour ago, leaving Jenna in charge for the day), seemingly content with the fact that Pat’s in jail. Which no one should be content with. Brian finds himself stumbling over his words more and more as he speaks, his eyes continually drifting to Jim Horace’s too-peaceful face. Something about him just riles up Brian’s jimmies, something about the fact that Pat doesn’t remember. Because he remembers, Brian knows he remembers, Pat has to know that Brian knows that he remembers. Unless drugs, but also fuck drugs (they’re a possibility but he doesn’t want them to be but they might be but what would that mean for Pat and what even was it and and and). 

He sniffs and hastily wipes his eyes with the sleeves of his jacket before Jenna can see. This is for later. This is for when he’s at home with his cat lying on his face and the comforting bellows of the foghorns echoing in the distance. 

He risks a look down at Jim’s face and immediately gags, turning back away and resting his head against the cabinet. He closes his eyes and takes in a breath, gags again, rushes out to the hallway and slumps against the wall long enough for him to not feel the need to puke up everything he’s eaten in the past twenty-four hours. 

After being cleaned up, the wound isn’t that bad looking. It’s just...a hole. No bones sticking out of it. No gore clumping up around the rim. No brains spilling out. Just...a hole. Brian knows that Jenna’s going to have a day of pulling out the shrapnel or whatever else is left inside, but at least the bullet itself stayed mostly-whole. That makes it easier for them. And, the easier it is, the faster this nightmare gets over with. God, he just wants to wake up. 

He didn’t realize how much he relies on Pat until this case. It’s not that he needs him, per se. He’s a damn good officer on his own. He got promoted for a reason. He solved over fifty cases on his first morning as a detective. And he’s done cases alone since partnering up with him. Half the time he does them alone, only going to Pat for a late-night case unraveling when it’s been stumping him for over three days, or when a case has been stumping Pat for over two weeks. But that’s the problem: he needs him. Not for his smarts or whatever, though those do help. And not for the wine, though that definitely helps get the old brain moving. It’s just plain old Patrick Gill and his stupid penchant for accidentally figuring out things while drunk or under a ton of stress. Plain old Pat and his ability to just be there when Brian needs him, no matter if it’s three in the morning or if it’s a boat crime that Pat really gives no shits about (Brian isn’t stupid. He knows Pat isn’t a boat fan. But he always helps, and that’s... adorable. Amazing. Selfless. Heroic). And even before moving to New York when Brian was going through training, he kept an eye on the New York City papers for just a glance at this genius detective. Brian wanted to be like him. And now he is, for better or for worse. 

Brian slinks back into the morgue and pointedly looks away from the body, focusing on a cheap model skeleton in the back corner by a closet. It has a red boa around its neck. The boa is inside of a chain of evidence bags duct taped together. It’s a very classy skeleton. Much better than the slowly-decomposing corpse a few feet behind him. 

“Got your time for you, Brian,” Jenna says, looking up from a comically-large notepad. “Four-thirty-three in the morning. This morning. One shot to the temple. He probably died within minutes.”

He lets out a sigh and closes his eyes, picturing the scene. Jim Horace standing on his boat, Pat Gill in front of him. Jim raises the gun, Pat lunges for the gun, and the scene goes white. Wait, no, scratch that. Pat wasn’t in any shape to go lunging, that’s for sure. He was drunk and potentially-drugged. No way he was able to fight. So Jim Horace is standing on his boat, Pat Gill in front of him. Jim raises the gun, Pat falls forward, accidentally aiming the gun upwards and towards Jim’s head. Wait, no, scratch that. That’s just plain stupid. 

“Pat’s right-handed. How easy would it have been for him to shoot him in the…” Brian trails off, tapping his finger against his left temple. 

Jenna hums, and Brian can hear her scratching something out on the notepad. 

“Pretty hard, unless he was standing behind him.”

“He wasn’t,” Brian says. “He wasn’t in any shape for sneaking. Besides, Jim’s a couple inches taller. There would’ve had to be a struggle to get him low enough for the bullet to enter at that angle, right?”

He opens his eyes and begrudgingly goes to look back at the wound, crouching and making a finger gun. He closes an eye and sticks his tongue out. He shuffles around back of the table to at least try and replicate the correct angle. His stomach churns.

Jenna comes to join him, pulling a fresh pair of gloves on and poking at the wound. Brian gags and turns his head. 

“Wasn’t Detective Gill drunk, too?” she asks. 

Brian nods. “Among potential other things. So he-”

“He couldn’t have shot him,” Jenna finishes. She grins wickedly underneath her mask and raises a bloody glove for a hi-five. Brian grimaces and scuttles away, standing and shuddering. “Of course we’ll need Simone’s opinion. I am just an intern.”

Brian sighs and nods. “Yeah, okay. Thanks, anyway.”

“Anytime.” She smiles. “And, hey, Brian? Get some sleep tonight.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

She crosses her arms, blood smearing along the sleeves of her coat. With that creepy mask covering the lower half of her face (skulls, really?) and the Zeppelin tape starting over and the skeleton in the back corner, she easily is the most terrifying thing he’s seen in his entire life (other than Pat Gill in a jail cell, but whatever). 

“I think you will,” she says, eyes crinkled up in what apparently passes for a smile around here. 

He jerks his head in a nod, suddenly certain that he will not, in fact, be getting any sleep tonight. 

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

She nods, content, and waves a hand. “Tell Laura hi from me.”

“Will do.”

“And, for God’s sake, finish this case quickly. We’re going to need this joker’s drawer for a new shipment next week.”

Definitely not considering whether or not to ask someone to look into whatever the fuck that _means_ , Brian stammers out a goodbye and runs out the doors. 

-

“Off the record, do either of you two know anything about drugs?” he asks that night at dinner. Technically, second dinner. First dinner was with a very tired Pat on the floor outside of a jail cell with Jeff watching through the window to make sure no funny business happened. 

Laura and Jonah give each other a look. 

“Well,” she slowly says. “That depends.”

“It’s for Pat,” Brian explains. He sighs at their suddenly-judgemental looks and slumps a bit in his chair. “I think someone drugged him last night after our date and I’d like to figure out what it was.”

Jonah, suddenly interested, leans forward and smiles, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. 

“Was that where you two were last night?” he asks. 

Laura leans forward as well, her eyes widening. “Did you two do it?”

Brian flushes and waves his hands around in the universal _oh dear God stop talking before my entire body spontaneously combusts_ motion. “No! We saw a movie. That’s it.”

“ _Flashdance?_ ” Laura asks. She nods. “ _Flashdance_. You two did it.”

“We did _not_!” he cries, desperately hoping that his chair would fall out from under him, the carpet would open up, and he would be sent to another dimension where the opposite of this conversation existed. He hides his face in one hand and waves the other around again. “Can we just...can we just stay on topic? He could get life for this!”

“For doing drugs, or for fucking a dude?” Jonah ponders (Brian can almost see him stroking his beard). 

“Neither! He was drugged and maybe kidnapped.”

“Oh shit,” Laura says, putting her serious voice on. The one saved specifically for when Brian or Jonah is being a dumbass, or for when the other cops try busting her for stealing drugs and throwing them into the sea. 

“Yeah, so can we just-”

“Was gonna say, I didn’t see him near my usual hookups…” Jonah muses. 

“ _Jonah_!” Brian screeches. God, he hates these people. God, he loves these people. 

“Alright, alright,” Jonah says. He puts a hand on Brian’s shoulder and squeezes it. “I don’t have any hookups. But maybe I can help. Tell us everything.”

And so, after a long moment of calming himself down via a Zuko hopping onto his lap and purring louder than Sandra’s emergency motor, Brian does. He describes Jim as best he can (ginger, kind of a bowl cut thing going on, pale, too many freckles). He describes whatever the fuck was going on with Pat that morning (drowsy, mopey, hungover, twitchy). And, after being threatened with a breadstick-wielding Laura, he describes the date for “background” (beautiful, lovely, warm, terrifying). All the while, Jonah finishes his “meat-lovers salad” and Laura thumbs through a tiny pocket notebook full of things that Brian should definitely not know about. 

“You said he can’t remember, like,” Laura says, finger making a circular motion in the air. “any of it?”

“So he says,” Brian says. He’s abandoned his own salad by now, instead occupying his hands with Zuko’s soft, yet slightly sticky, fur. At one point he pulled out his own notebook and handed it over to the other two to dissect, which was probably a bad idea and could potentially get him fired if they tried attempting any of the failed attempts at solving previous cases. Zuko nips at a finger, and Brian smiles and boops his nose. Zuko then decides that, yes, this other finger shall be his primary target, and he starts gnawing on it with a ferocity only matched by a toddler pounding the sand on the beach with a plastic trowel. 

“Potential anterograde amnesia,” Jonah notes. He chews thoughtfully on a chunk of what Brian hopes is steak. “Nice.”

“No, not nice,” Brian says, his heart somehow sinking even further than how deep it’s been all day. He’s been working his way through some psych books from the library, and any time ‘amnesia’ is mentioned, it is literally never a good thing. 

“So he could really not remember the whole time he was drugged,” Laura says. She turns the page in her notebook and snorts, shaking her head. Brian sighs and allows Zuko to move on to another finger. 

“And that makes my job so much harder,” Brian laments, absently poking at his abandoned salad with a fork. “I mean, yeah, if we figure out what it was, that makes it easier. But it’s kinda hard to get a confession out of the assailant if he’s a stiff.”

“Xanax?” Laura asks, looking to Jonah. He looks at her, and they both shake their heads in unison. She turns the page again. 

“And what if he’s lying?” Brian continues, fully knowing that the other two are preoccupied with things that he really should be arresting them for knowing about. “He could’ve just been trying to get rid of me. What if he wants to go to jail?”

“Why would he want that?” Laura asks. She holds out the book to Jonah, who immediately shakes his head. 

“Because he’d rather be there and straight than here and gay?” Brian chances, immediately regretting his words. But, then again, they’re his words. His fault they were even considered. His fault. “I practically outed him to an entire restaurant last night. And the movie theater.”

“Brian, how many people were at a midnight showing of fucking _Flashdance_?” Jonah asks. He looks up from the notebook and right into his eyes. “And didn’t you tell me you two were cuddling in the back the whole time?”

“Uh.”

“And he’s literally into you,” Laura adds. She dog-ears the page she’s on and closes the book, setting it on the table. “Trust me. I have a feeling about these things.”

Brian groans. “Gaydar isn’t a real thing, Laura.”

“A, it totally is. B, you should’ve seen his fucking face when I talked about you in our interrogation. It was like, uh…” 

She pauses for a moment before making a face very akin to a disastrous manatee. But Brian knows that face. It’s just Pat’s face, albeit the one saved specifically for when Brian’s talking. Or when Brian’s there. Well, fuck. 

“Huh,” Brian distantly says, mentally going back through the past year and a half they’ve been working together and counting all the manatee faces. There’s a lot more than he realized. 

Content, Laura opens the notebook back up, walking it over to the couch and flopping down on it. Zuko quickly follows, scrambling off Brian’s lap and dashing to get the spot between her legs. Jonah shakes his head and stabs at another chunk of meat. 

“You guys are dumbasses,” he comments. 

Brian tiredly nods. “Yeah.”

“And you need a break from all this.”

“Yeah.”

“You two should go on a trip. Like up to, uh, where’s he from?”

Brian shrugs. “Somewhere in Maine, I think.”

Jonah snaps and smiles around his meat. “Niagara Falls! Very romantic.”

Brian shoots him a glare. “You’re hilarious.”

“What?” Jonah asks, eyes going all wide and innocent. A bit of meat juice dribbles out from between his lips. 

Brian shakes his head, crossing his arms. “Nothing.”

“Seriously, Brian, what’s up?”

“He just…” Brian swallows, balling his hands up into fists. “He isn’t out yet. So I want him to be comfortable. We might not even go on past last night, especially after this case. So he...I…”

Thankfully before he can figure out what was going to finish out that sentence, Laura triumphantly calls from the couch, “I think I got it! Jonah?”

Jonah shovels the last few chunks into his mouth and trudges over to join her. Brian stays put, pushing the kale around on his plate. He wouldn’t be surprised if Pat never wanted to see him again after this, after helping him. Because maybe the manatee faces were just a fluke, pun not intended. Maybe he’s going to sober up while coming down off of whatever it was that he was given and he’s going to realize that, yeah, Brian’s a piece of shit. Or maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, maybe Pat would just say that he isn’t ready for a relationship, like, ever. And that would be fine. Brian’s survived this long, he can go on for an eternity until Pat’s ready. 

“Yeah,” Jonah says. Nods. “That might be it.”

Laura adds, “I mean, based off of-” 

“And we would need to actually see him to know for certain-”

Brian thinks he might be able to arrange it. Well, not tonight. Tara basically kicked him out of the building at six and told him to go home and sleep, as if he ever sleeps when he’s got a case to work on. But if he brings Jonah and Laura in early enough in the morning that Tara isn’t there and it’s just them and the night shift, who does literally nothing and spends all night playing hockey with broomsticks and whichever one of Pat’s coffee mugs he forgot on his desk, he might be able to…

Brian clears his throat, and Jonah and Laura turn to look at him. “So...what was it?”

-

“Who’re they?” Pat asks, slowly sitting up. He yawns and swings his legs off of the cot and onto the floor. His glasses are still on the other side of the cell. So’s the donut. 

“Civilian consultants,” Brian whispers. He looks around for the night shift, and, after a moment, pulls out a ring of keys and unlocks the cell door. 

Pat stiffens, a hand curling in the shitty blanket he had been given for the night. “Brian…”

“No, it’s fine,” he hisses, looking over his shoulder and at the door. Someone made a goal. “My boys are going to look you over, then we’ll be out of your hair.”

Pat strains his neck to look over Brian’s shoulder and at the two figures standing behind him. Laura’s got a fake, Groucho Marx-style set of glasses on, complete with a fake mustache and nose. Her hair’s tucked under an old plaid fedora Brian found in the back of his closet. Jonah’s sunglasses do absolutely nothing to hide his face, but he’s trying his hardest with the tiny fake mustache he’s got taped on. Brian is just Brian, of course, though he did slap another mustache on top of his own, this one a walrus-style one. 

“Is that Jonah?” Pat asks, raising a hand to scrub at his face. At least he’s moving normally, now, though that might be a bit of a problem. 

“Who is this ‘Jonah’ you speak of?” Jonah asks, voice laced with the worst Italian accent Brian’s heard in his entire life. He stifles a laugh. “I am Sergio.”

“And I’m Barbara,” Laura adds, her accent at least somewhat tolerable. 

Brian rolls his eyes and holds the door open for them to go in and inspect Pat. “Just be quiet. I’ll explain once you’re in the clear.”

Jonah goes in first, yanking Pat up by the arm and sniffing his hair. Oh, great. Laura follows, getting on her tiptoes to look over his face. Oh, great. Pat looks at Brian with his classic _Brian, what the actual fuck_ face. Which is one that he is all too familiar with. 

“You need a shower,” Jonah comments. 

“Thanks,” Pat deadpans. He makes eye contact with Brian, who shrugs and peeks back out the window and into the main room. One of the officers is doing a handstand on Clayton’s desk. 

Laura bends down and pulls Pat’s hand closer to her face. “Nice, nice. Where do you get your nails done?”

“Brian, what the fuck?” Pat asks. His legs are wobbling a bit. 

“His name is Gino,” Jonah snaps. Both Laura and Brian shush him, and he shrugs sheepishly. 

“Listen, I’ve got a hunch,” Brian says, adjusting his drooping mustache, then adjusting his regular mustache. “Jenna agrees with me.”

“Simone’s intern? What’s she got to-”

Pat’s cut off as Jonah opens his mouth and sticks his finger inside, poking his teeth. Laura stands up and stands on top of the cot, inspecting the top of Pat’s head. Pat fixes Brian with a pitiful, yet absolutely murderous, glance. 

“Simone’s got the flu, Jenna’s in charge until she’s back on Friday, and I’m trying to prove that you couldn’t have fired that gun.”

Pat’s eyebrows crinkle in what might be confusion, or it might be anger. 

“Again, I’ll explain once you’re in the clear.”

“Saturday,” Jonah supplies, letting go of Pat’s mouth and wiping his finger on his jeans. 

Laura nods. “You two should make a day out of it.”

“I heard there’s a new place in Chinatown where Happy Moon used to be,” Jonah adds. 

Laura hops off the cot, and Pat heavily sits down, putting his head in his hands. Brian tilts his head out of the cell, and Laura and Jonah exit, both patting him on the shoulder as they pass. 

Laura stops briefly and whispers in his ear, “We’ll be in the car.”

She winks at him and exits the room. 

Brian weighs the possibility of getting caught in a cell with a murder suspect versus not getting to give Pat Gill a hug, settling on going inside and sitting awkwardly on the edge of the cot. 

“Sorry about them,” he says. He pulls on the collar of his shirt. 

“Tara’s going to kick your ass for letting them in here,” Pat says. He scoots closer to Brian until their legs are touching. “Hell, I might do it for her.”

“Nah,” Brian smiles. “You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t.”

He bumps Pat’s shoulder, and Pat lifts his head up and weakly smiles at him. He’s still hunched over, and he’s still in that godawful outfit. It’s kind of funny, but it really, really isn’t. Really. 

“I think I’ve almost got this one cracked,” Brian says. “Laura and Jonah, uh, helped.”

Pat quirks an eyebrow, smile widening. “Was it illegal?”

Brian gasps, puts a hand to his chest in faux-horror. “Pat Gill, I can’t believe you’d accuse my sister and my best friend of doing illegal activities in the name of the law.”

Pat chuckles. “Right. I totally won’t have to look into whatever they’ve got going on once I’m out of here.”

 _Out of here_. Big improvement from that morning. 

“You do, I leave you.” Brian teases. Pat’s smile flickers, and Brian winces. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” Pat hastily says. He swallows and tentatively puts a hand on Brian’s thigh, sitting up ramrod-straight. Brian shivers at the contact, feeling a spark travel from that spot up to his heart, jump-starting it. He puts his hand on top of Pat’s, heat flooding his body as Pat’s hand curls around his. 

 

“You’re being awfully forward,” Brian says. He nervously laughs, not sure why he’s nervous. 

Pat stiffly shrugs. “We’re alone in a dark jail cell at, what, three in the morning?”

“Four.”

“And, uh. I’m...maybe I’m a bit scared of never getting to see you again.”

Brian lets out a breath and squeezes Pat’s hand. “You will. I’m coming in for interrogation in the afternoon.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, like…” Pat groans, his free hand moving up to mess with his hair. “I was an asshole last night. The other night. Whatever. Movie night.”

“You weren’t an asshole. I was. I-”

Pat interrupts him. “You are the complete opposite of an asshole. I fucking...you wanted a nice night, probably, and I was shitty. We didn’t do any of…” He waves his free hand at their joined hands. “this. And you like this, right?”

Brian nods. “I do. But I also like being with you. Just you, no strings attached.”

“I’m fine with strings, if that’s-”

“Pat, I made you have a goddamn panic attack at the dinner table. I pressured you into something you aren’t ready for. If you even-”

“I wasn’t pressured,” Pat snaps. “I’ve been waiting for that for...for so fucking long, Brian. You’ve been driving me nuts since I first saw you.”

Brian blinks and looks at him, his secondary mustache only half on his face. “You…”

Pat nods. His face is pale in the slits of moonlight managing to squeeze their ways in through the window shades. They were probably closed earlier for his hangover, but now they’re halfway open, just open enough to turn his skin a silvery white and turn spots of his hair to tinsel. 

“You’re the most amazing man in the world, Brian David Gilbert,” Pat says, looking distantly at the door to the outside world. “You deserve better than what I can give you.”

Brian shakes his head and follows Pat’s gaze. “I’m happy with what you’re comfortable with. If you aren’t ready for anything right now, that’s fine. I don’t mind waiting a bit longer.”

“I’m impatient. I don’t think I’d be able to stand another day without you.” Pat snorts and shakes his head, ducking it and brushing a lock of hair behind his ear. “God, I sound pathetic. Look, I’m okay with a relationship. I just don’t want to be...out. It’s too dangerous, Brian.”

The moonlight highlights a bruise on Pat’s neck, right under his ear. His hair was covering it earlier, but now…

Brian raises his free hand and presses two fingers gently to the spot. Pat winces. 

“That bastard,” Brian murmurs. Of course. No wonder Pat was...no wonder he was drunk. 

Pat hums inquisitively, and Brian shakes his head and pulls his hand away. 

“I should get going,” he says, not moving. 

“You should,” Pat agrees, not moving. 

They both turn their heads to look at each other, almost in unison. Pat’s got a half-smile on his face, and, even in the near-darkness, the tint to his face is obvious. But Brian knows he isn’t any better. Hell, he probably looks worse. He always does, compared to Pat Gill. Because he’s beautiful. And Brian’s Brian. 

Pat leans his head closer, and Brian moves up to meet it, and they’re inches away, and-

Outside the room, one of the officers cheers as he makes a goal. There’s the sound of shattering glass, and someone shouting, “Eric!”. Pat groans and drops his head, resting it on top of Brian’s. 

“They’re fucking idiots,” he grumbles. Brian snorts, slightly disappointed. The moment’s gone.

He knows he has to leave eventually, if only because Laura and Jonah are probably filling his car with strange substances that he really should confiscate from them when they get home. Tara will be in in three hours. Someone’s bound to check the holding cell’s room eventually. But Pat’s warm against his side and Brian’s full of hope for the first time all day. He’ll get moving eventually, but with Pat Gill’s smile only a few inches away and Brian’s soul itself overflowing, he’s fine for now.

-

Brian yawns as he starts the recorder with the eraser of his pencil. 

“May fourteenth, 1983. Please state your name.”

Pat fiddles with the sleeves of the shirt he was provided with. This one’s a nice blue plaid, matched with neon yellow running shorts and pink flip-flops. 

“Patrick Gill,” Pat says. He yawns, too, almost tipping over in his chair and face-planting on the table. Brian didn’t end up leaving the cell until almost six, and he’s pretty sure that, just like him, Pat didn’t get any rest after he left. Brian’s bed was cold. He ended up lying on the couch watching the static on the tv until Zuko came screaming up to him begging for head scritches. 

“How did you know the victim?” Brian asks. 

Pat tenses. “Aren’t you supposed to ask what I was doing on the night of the murder?”

“I already know that.”

“Brian-”

“Just answer my question, Patrick.”

Pat grumbles and crosses his arms. “We knew each other back in the academy. We were roommates.”

“Roommates?”

Pat nods.

Brian taps his pencil against the table. “Nothing more?”

Pat flushes and looks firmly down at the linoleum. “No. We, uh. This isn’t going to go anywhere, is it?”

Brian shakes his head. “This is just for me.”

Pat chews on his lip for a moment before sighing and continuing. “We had a, uh...a bit of a thing. Back in ‘72. Never went anywhere. I realized that I wasn’t into guys, he was okay with that.”

“Was he, though?”

Pat gives him a firm look, his _we’ll talk over the specifics later_ look. In return, Brian gives him his _let’s just get this over with, Patrick_ look. 

“Well, uh. He might not have been that okay with it.” Pat picks at a loose thread on his sleeve. “I was scared. I couldn’t do time. So I turned him in in exchange for a couple months of therapy and community service.”

Brian pales. He clears his throat; both his and Pat’s hands are shaking in their respective activities. He jots down a few notes, mostly things to ask Pat about later once they’re not being recorded. 

_Why did you turn him in? Did you love him? Do you_

He abandons that last question and moves on. 

“How did you two meet?” he asks. 

“We were roommates. One thing led to another, and…”

Brian nods. “I get it. Uh, so you two were...apart for a while. Did you have any contact with him while he was in prison?”

Pat shakes his head. “He was sent upstate. I finished my training and moved down here. Never even thought about him until the other night.”

Now that’s a fucking lie. Brian knows it, he doesn’t know how, but he does. Something about the tone of Pat’s voice, how it’s edging on panic yet is more controlled than it’s been in a long while. Too controlled. 

“And, when you two met up again, how did it go? Was it everything you were hoping for and more?”

“Uh. I dropped you off and was on my way back home. He saw me, we got to talking, we went out for drinks.” Pat blinks a few times, frowning. “I...I don’t know what happened after that. I think we went to his boat? Or maybe I found it by myself. I just woke up in holding, and he was dead. Apparently.”

Brian resists the urge to leap across the table and pull his partner into a hug. He forces himself to stay put and keep taking notes. 

“You said you went drinking. Where?”

“Uh. Lucky’s. You know that place, right?”

Brian does. They went there after their first case they solved together, and Brian got so ridiculously wasted, Pat had to piggyback him to his apartment. 

He nods. “And did he, you know...make any moves? Anything like that?”

Pat’s grip on his sleeves grows tighter. “He tried kissing me once. That’s it.”

At that, the tip of Brian’s pencil breaks. He smiles apologetically. “I’ll be right back.”

He takes a moment outside to pace, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up and popping open a few buttons. He knows that there’s another pencil in that room, he always brings two just in case. But. _Fuck Jim Horace._

He nods amiably at Tara as she passes by. She rolls her eyes. He scowls once she’s gone. 

He slides back into his chair and pushes up his right sleeve for no good reason other than the simple need to do something with his hands. 

“Sorry about that,” he says. 

“No, it’s fine,” Pat says, his head tilted slightly. He looks...confused, for lack of a better word. 

Brian clears his throat and continues. “So it was just an attempted kiss, right? Nothing else?”

Pat shakes his head. “Nothing. Unless he, uh...yeah.”

Brian shudders. “You said that you don’t remember anything, right? About when did you drop off the map, so to speak?”

“I don’t know, three drinks in? You know I’m not that much of a lightweight, though.”

Brian begs to differ, but he bites his tongue. For now. 

“Did you leave your drink alone with him at any point in the night?”

Pat frowns. “What does that matter?”

Brian sighs. “Just answer the question, Gill.”

Pat’s frown deepens, but he nods. “I think I went to grab some napkins at some point. And that’s...oh, God.”

Brian nods, and he pales, sinking back into his chair. 

“And you’re certain that you don’t remember anything?” Brian asks, demands. 

Pat shakily nods, eyes wide, breaths short. Brian quickly stops the recording and scoots his chair to the other side of the table, already getting his tie ready to be an emergency stress ball again. But Pat refuses it, instead scrambling for Brian’s hand and squeezing it. Just as friends do. 

“I. Oh, _God_ ,” Pat breathes, nearly wheezing. 

Brian shushes him gently, scooting ever closer. Close enough that Pat could have something more to grab onto if he needed to. 

“He’s dead,” Brian says instead of saying something actually useful. 

“Good,” Pat says, nodding. He nods again, and Brian nods again. His other hand finds Brian’s other hand. “Good.”

-

Two long, long days later, Simone gets back from sick leave and is immediately cutting people open. Brian’s there as soon as Jenna gives him the call. 

“Jenna filled me in,” Simone says as soon as Brian’s walking through the doors, her voice still hoarse and nasally. Jenna hands him a mask, and he slips it on. “Sorry about your boyfriend.”

The tips of Brian’s ears go red. “He’s not my-”

Simone tilts her head towards the skeleton in the back. “Wheel Eggbert over here, will you, Jenna?”

Brian mouths out a silent ‘Eggbert’ as Jenna brings the skeleton over. Simone walks away from the body she was working on and slips her gloves off, dropping them in a bucket marked ‘Hazardous Waste’. And, out from under her lab coat, she pulls out a fucking gun.

Brian immediately reaches for his weapon. He could maybe take the skeleton. 

Simone laughs and hands the gun over to Jenna, handle-first. Jenna takes it and twirls it around her finger. Brian winces. So many OSHA violations broken in just ten seconds. 

“Jenna is going to be our Patrick,” Simone explains. “Brian, you play the arms.”

He awkwardly shuffles around back of the skeleton, grabbing its two humeruses and waggling the arms around. Satisfied, Simone takes charge. 

The first attempt ends in ‘Pat’ getting shot in the forehead. So does the second, third, and fourth. Starting with the fifth, ‘Pat’ moves behind ‘Horace’ to try and shot from behind. While not a perfect match, the ratio’s about right. Jenna has to reach to get the gun at the right angle, and, even then, it’s shaking too much for a clean shot. 

In the end, as Brian wheels Eggbert the skeleton back to its corner, he wonders why there couldn’t be any fucking security footage to look at. He could’ve solved this by now, goddamn it. Pat could’ve been out by now, and they could be, like. Kissing. God, Brian would kill for a kiss right now. He almost felt the kiss timer tick down the other day in the cell, they were so close. So close and yet so far. 

“Hey, you alright?” Simone asks. 

Brian smiles. “Yeah. I am.”

He is. 

-

Brian shifts in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his legs. It’s dead silent except for the low rumble of the fan in the corner, the gentle rustle of papers. He checks his watch, puts his arm down, checks it again. Still 1:05. Wait, 1:06. 

He finished compiling all his evidence approximately seven seconds before Tara called him into her office to present his case. Before that, he was in the holding room with Pat struggling over today’s crossword. Before that, he was panicking over having to present his case. Before that, he was in the holding room with Pat beginning today’s crossword. 

Tara taps the cap of her pen against the table, spinning her swivel chair slightly. Her hair blows slightly in the fan’s breeze. She hasn’t spoken a word since he handed her the file. It’s been ten minutes, and Brian’s going to have a fucking heart attack. 

He taps his nails against the arm of his chair to the beat of a song he and Jonah have been working on. Then he stops when she glares at him over the rims of her glasses. 

Another two minutes pass, and she narrows her eyes. “Brian, who are these ‘civilian consultants’?”

He winces. “Uh, just some friends. They asked to remain confidential.”

“We aren’t journalists. We’re cops. There’s no confidential in law enforcement.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She taps her pen against her desk expectantly, and he sighs and slumps a bit in his chair. 

“Jonah Scott and Laura Gilbert,” he says. 

She huffs. “Do I need to know why they have so much information on, what’s this called? Rohypnol?”

“I’ll look into it once this one’s over with.”

Tara nods and writes something on the page in pink ink. She then goes back to silently reading, sending Brian spiraling back into anxiety territory. 

Pat had smiled when he had seen Brian. Not the usual _just kill me already I’m sad and Patrick_ smile Brian’s used to, but a genuine one. Something that screamed _I missed you. I’m happy to see you._ And Brian was happy to see him, him and his shitty, shitty lost and found clothing (today it’s a bright orange polo paired with bleached denim shorts and black running shoes). Happy to see him, him and his everything and just plain ol’ him. And he might actually die if he doesn’t get Pat off the hook. If he never gets to see him again. And that would be just his luck, fall in love with a guy, get that guy to maybe fall in love with him back, and fuck up and get said guy sent to a federal prison for first-degree murder. 

“Thanks,” was the last thing Pat had said before Brian had given him the paper and left. Just a smile, a hand squeeze. “See you tonight.”

And Brian didn’t say anything back. And what a last sentence that would be. See you tonight. And then? Nothing. 

Tara finishes just as Brian’s about to excuse himself to grab some coffee and secretly have a panic attack in the bathroom. She neatly stacks the papers back together, caps her pen, and closes the folder, centering it on her desk. She folds her hands and looks him dead in the eyes. 

“You really think he offed himself?” she asks. 

Brian, to his credit, doesn’t shrink under her stare. He straightens and clears his throat before answering. 

“It’s the only other way. Because Detective Gill was, uh, busy dealing with his own issues, he couldn’t have shot him. Plus there’s the gun thing-”

“Yeah, about that,” she interrupts, leaning forward a bit. “That was Doctor de Rochefort’s idea? Where’d she get the gun?”

Brian shrugs. “Probably same place she gets all her knives from.”

Tara looks like she wants to say something, but she shakes her head. “Anyway, it was a good idea. Maybe confiscate the gun next time, though.”

“Of course.”

“Your case looks solid, Brian. Proud of you. Let’s hope the attorneys are as convinced as I am.”

Brian smiles slightly, bows his head slightly. It’s respect, he thinks. That’s what he’s supposed to do to his bosses, bow. Tara smiles as well, and she slides the file back over to him. 

“Go on and tell him the good news,” she says. 

And he does.

-

Pat’s quiet as he’s released. Brian lets him be. 

-

“How many boys have you been with?” Pat asks. 

It’s two weeks after the case’s close, and things are okay. Fine. Perfect. Honestly, Brian couldn’t be any happier. He’s got his Pat back, Zuko’s learned that the couch is inedible, his shingles have fucked off for the time being. The place that’s replaced Happy Moon is, in fact, the best fucking Chinese place in the entire goddamn city. 

Laura and Jonah are down at the docks doing something with the dockmaster that Brian should absolutely be busting them for. But it’s keeping them out of the apartment for long enough for him and Pat to have some quality alone time on the couch. He’ll get them next time. 

The Dukes are on the tv, but Brian isn’t paying any attention. Because he’s got his head in Patrick Gill’s lap and Zuko sitting on his feet on the other end of the couch. He’s got Pat right there, _right there_ , and it’s the most magical he’s felt in a long, long time. Pat’s got his jacket on still despite the June heat, and it’s beautiful. He’s got his fingers in Brian’s hair, and it’s beautiful. He’s got the smallest hint of a smile on his face, and it’s beautiful. He’s beautiful, and it’s beautiful. 

Brian hums and thinks back. There have been...a lot. 

“Maybe seven? Eight?” he answers. He moans a bit as Pat’s fingers snag a knot. “God, Pat. Uh, maybe nine. I dunno. You?”

Pat shakes his head. “Just Jim. Just...just him.”

Zuko shifts, aggressively shoving the side of his face into Brian’s foot. He mews, and Brian sits up to give him head scritches. He pulls his knees up to his chest and smiles down at his cat, who narrows his eyes and curls back up, closing his eyes. 

“I think your cat’s homophobic,” Pat comments. 

Brian laughs. “He’s just as queer as the rest of us here.”

“I don’t think anyone could be more queer than you, my dear,” Pat says. On the tv, the General Lee jumps across what’s probably the entirety of the Mississippi River. 

Brian gasps and scrambles off the couch and to his feet, pointing at Pat, a grin on his face. “Ah, but you are more of a queer than me, I fear.”

Pat smirks and settles back, slinging an arm across the back of the couch. “But thanks to you, the master queer, I have finally kicked my ass in gear.”

“Even so, you were queer before, I hear.”

Pat laughs. “We already used that one.”

Brian shakes his head. “Other ‘hear’, darling.”

Pat’s cheeks go red. He clears his throat. “Uh, where were we?”

“We were talking about your love life, I think,” Brian says, sitting back down next to him, immediately inserting himself into Pat’s side like he was born to be there. Which he absolutely was. “I mean, we don’t have to. We can just, you know, kiss.”

Pat’s hand once again finds Brian’s hair, and he shakes his head. “Not tonight. My, uh. My nose hurts.”

Brian hums and nuzzles his face into the side of Pat’s neck. “Your poor nose.”

Pat grunts and nudges him away. “Hey, man, glasses.”

Brian sheepishly pulls his glasses off and tucks them into the collar of Pat’s t-shirt, letting his finger hesitate just so. Pat’s mouth is open, his eyes are wide, and there’s nothing Brian wants more in this world than to kiss that starstruck look off his face. Brian winks and settles back down. Pat’s arm tightens. 

“I’m being serious,” Pat says.

“Sure you are, dear,” Brian says. He looks up at Pat with a small smile. “I don’t mind waiting.”

“You don’t?”

Pat looks so surprised, it makes Brian’s heart break a little. 

He nods and reaches a hand behind him to squeeze Pat’s. “‘Course. You’re a part of this, too, you know.”

Pat’s fingers move from Brian’s hair to his hand. “Right. I know that.”

“Then you know that you can set boundaries, right?”

“Of course.”

“So…”

“So, I’ll tell you them when I come up with them.”

Brian rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Just, you know. Take care of yourself.”

Pat smiles softly. “Oh, I am.”

Brian feels his face heat up, and he buries his face into the crook of Pat’s shoulder. He feels Pat’s laughter rather than hears it. 

“You sap,” he says, voice muffled by Pat’s neck. His neck, fuck. Brian suddenly has the urge to lick it, but he manages to resist. For now. 

“Look who’s talking,” Pat says. Brian can hear the smile in his voice, and, even without seeing it, he knows exactly what it looks like, and it’s positively radiant. “Mister I-wasn’t-paying-attention-to-the-movie.”

Brian sits up with a smile that he hopes is just coy enough, yet also deadly serious because this is, in fact, deadly serious. “Well excuse me, Mister You’ve-been-driving-me-nuts-since-I-first-saw-you. I didn’t know there was-”

Pat barks out a laugh, shaking his head. “I did not say that.”

“Oh, you definitely did.”

“Did not.”

“I’ve got a perfect memory, Detective Gill.”

“Oh, yeah? Prove it.”

Brian thinks back, way back. And he grins. “I remember the first day we met. Don’t think I didn’t see you checking me out.”

Pat sputters, and Brian cackles like the evil mastermind he truly is. Truth be told, Brian, in fact, barely remembers anything from that day other than the warm feeling bubbling inside of him when they first shook hands. Back then, Pat’s hair was cut short, too short. Way too short. He ignored Brian after that, except for, apparently, all the times he was checking him out. Which he now wishes he remembered, because Pat had to have had those manatee faces going on. 

“You’re evil,” Pat coughs. “Despicable.”

“Irresistible?” Brian offers, putting a hand on his hip and striking a pose. 

Pat immediately nods. “That, too.”

Somewhere down on the docks is an explosion. Brian distantly thinks that, yeah, that was probably Laura. There’s a scream, and Brian distantly thinks that, yeah, that was probably Jonah. Pat flinches, almost stands, but Brian grabs his wrist and pulls him back down, swinging a leg over his lap so that he’s straddling him. Pat stops breathing for a moment, looking like a deer in the headlights. Brian pulls Pat’s glasses off, pulls his own glasses off Pat’s shirt, and places them on the coffee table on top of the approximately sixteen cases that they’re supposed to be working on right now. They’re so close, Pat’s breath is so, so warm against Brian’s skin, they could just kiss right now. Right now. But Pat looks scared. So Brian relaxes his grip and shifts so that he doesn’t have as much of his weight on him. An easy out. 

“This is our night,” he says. “Just us. We can deal with them Monday.”

Pat jerks his head up and down. “Monday.”

Brian waits long enough to make sure that Pat isn’t going to grab his shoes and glasses and take off before moving fully back onto the couch. He smooths down Pat’s shirt for him apologetically, aware that it is not normal to apologize via smoothing. He’s about to pull his hand away when Pat grabs it and brings it up to his mouth. And licks it, wiggling his eyebrows. 

Brian groans and pulls his hand away, laughing despite his best intents. 

“You’re gross,” he whines. But he’s smiling, and he maybe hates that he’s smiling. 

“What, was that not romantic enough?” Pat asks, faking innocence. Brian knows better. There’s nothing innocent in that body, just a whole pile of trash. Trash that he absolutely fucking adores. “Here, let me try again.”

And Pat leans closer, and Brian lightly shoves him away, shrinking back. Pat persists, though, and a fight ensues that will go down in Brian’s books as one of the worst fights he’s ever been in. It only took one touch to get him to surrender. They end up tangled together on the couch, Brian on his back and Pat on top of him, Zuko long-gone and trying to rip up the carpet in Laura’s room and eat it, both out of breath and smiling. Brian looks up at that face, that face that is so, so close. Just a few more inches and...and...

Well, kissing’s overrated, anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did not invite her to their barbecue. And now she's out for revenge. 
> 
> Next time on NYBD!


	6. Interlude: Duality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ten years can make one hell of a difference

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another commercial break because i am sick and need validation. also because i am sick, this week's big chapter may be a day late or so, so yeah. sorry. i'll do my best to get it out on time

**1974**

Jim hands Pat a drink and leans back against the bar, taking a long swing out of his beer bottle. Technically, they aren’t supposed to be drinking. Technically, Pat’s supposed to be on duty across town watching the parking meters on Murphy. Technically, they’re supposed to be miles apart, Jim down in Jersey with his new boyfriend, Pat doing his actual job. Technically, Pat shouldn’t even be near him. Something in the back of his brain is telling him that, yes, he could get in big trouble for being with a faggot like this in public, and, yes, he is being very, very tempted right now. Because Jim’s pants are tight, his shirt is mostly unbuttoned, and his eyeliner is sharp as a knife. He’s hot and sweaty from the packed room, and Pat is more interested than he’d like to be. Should be. 

Pat nudges the drink set in front of him away, grimacing. Gin. Fuck gin. He’s too sober for gin. 

“What’s wrong, officer?” Jim asks, pouting, and, oh boy, that pout. 

“I’m on duty,” Pat says. He grabs another pretzel from the bowl and pops it into his mouth, smirking a bit when he catches Jim’s gaze lingering on his lips. 

“And?” Jim asks, leaning closer. He smiles and shifts his eyes towards the dance floor. “You’re working yourself to death, Patty. You gotta relax.”

“I am relaxed,” Pat scowls, fully aware of the tenseness of his shoulders. Of Jim’s fingers snaking their ways onto his shoulder and immediately finding the biggest knots and picking them apart. Pat arches his back, moaning. “Oh, _fuck_ , Jim, you’ve been practicing.”

“Dated a masseuse last year,” Jim says, his voice oh so close to Pat’s ear.

Distantly, he knows that if anyone he knew walked into this extremely popular and crowded club, he’d be off the force and in a prison by the time this song ended. But. It’s also Jim, and he could never resist this bastard.

Pat turns his head to the left just enough to catch Jim’s mouth on his own before turning back towards the bar and pulling out his wallet, slamming a twenty down. He hops off the bar stool and grabs Jim’s arm, pulling him closer. 

“We have ten minutes before they’ll miss me,” he growls, living in the way that Jim _squirms_. “Make it quick.”

Jim snaps away and sharply grins. He’s missing a tooth, when did that happen? 

“Of course, officer,” he says. 

Pat makes it back with two minutes to spare. 

-

**1983**

Brian hands Pat a bottle of water and smiles, settling down next to him on the deck and raising his own bottle for a toast. Pat obliges with a shaky grin, and it’s fine. Technically, they spent way too much money on this fucking picnic. Technically, Pat should be at his new therapist’s, and he shouldn’t be on a boat in the first place. Technically, they shouldn’t be this close together, shouldn’t be only inches apart, shouldn’t be willing to get closer the moment the food’s gone or the moment the sun goes down. But it’s a “romantic, seaside picnic”, and there’s nothing Pat loves more than a good picnic. Unless it’s on a boat. On the ocean. At least a mile out from the harbor. With no quick way back to the city if things went wrong. 

“You okay?” Brian asks after Pat maybe spends a bit too much time staring at his egg salad sandwich. 

He nods and gives a thumbs-up. Brian does not look impressed, and Pat takes a bite of his sandwich, almost immediately coughing it up as the boat shifts with the waves. He scrambles to the edge of the boat and hangs over the side, one hand pressing his glasses to his face and the other clinging to the rails. Because he doesn’t want to die by egg sandwich. He wants to die by impalement, preferably. Maybe the plague. 

There’s a hand on his back and another attempting to hold his hair out of his face, but he knows that won’t work. He keeps it short for a reason. Otherwise it gains a form of sentience and refuses to be anywhere other than where it is most inconvenient. 

He eventually groans and stands back up, wiping his mouth and letting himself fall to his knees on the deck. 

“I,” he announces, losing his voice almost immediately and coughing, ignoring Brian’s pained look. “yeah, this was a bad idea.”

“Please don’t eat anything else,” Brian says. He reaches down and hands Pat his water bottle, and Pat eagerly takes it. 

“Not...not planning on it,” he wheezes. He whines a bit as some water dribbles onto his shirt. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

Brian sighs and sits down next to him. Pat immediately leans his entire self against him, partly as a support because his body’s in that post-vomit state where all he can do is sit numbly and hate himself, and partly because he’s Brian and Pat’s too far gone on him to not touch him when he’s this close. 

Brian puts an arm around him.

“No, I’m sorry,” he says, sounding absolutely heartbroken. Which he shouldn’t because, again, it’s just puke. “This was a bad idea.”

“Yeah,” Pat agrees. He takes another sip out of his water and grimaces as the fresh taste of bile rises yet again. He swallows it down and closes his eyes.

His dad used to take him out on the lake every summer. They made a trip out of it. The whole family ended up going, and every time, without fail, they had to leave him on the shore with the dog and watch them have a good time. He was always told that, with motion sickness, he should close his eyes and think about being somewhere solid. So, now as he’s on a very unstable and rocking boat, he thinks about being in his apartment with Brian by his side and Charlie and Zuko being cats somewhere where they can’t bother them. And isn’t that the thing, bringing Brian into his imaginings? But he’s solid, and, oh boy, Pat really needs that. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Brian asks. 

Pat shrugs one shoulder, the other pressed against Brian so tight he can barely move it. That might not be a good sign. 

“I picked last time,” he says, and Brian snorts, and Pat cracks an eye open and smiles. “‘sides, you look good with a lifejacket on.”

Brian lets out an exasperated breath, but he’s smiling. “You’re an idiot.”

“You’re just now figuring that out?”

“You’re very deceptive, Pat Gill. You almost had me convinced you’re a smart man.”

The ship lurches as a particularly annoying wave hits it, and Pat moans, “You know that isn’t right.”

“Now I do,” Brian says. He presses a light kiss to the top of Pat’s head and leans him back against the side of the boat. Pat takes another sip of his water. Brian heads to the wheel and starts doing his...whatever they’re called. Pat doesn’t know. Boat things. 

“Sorry,” Pat says, because he feels the need to keep repeating it. Because this was supposed to be a nice day and he fucked it. Again. Like he manages to do every time they go out and try doing something special. 

“Sorry!” Brian calls. “Can’t hear you over the sound of your own misery.”

Pat grumbles and half-heartedly flips him off. He closes his eyes again and focuses in on the bright tones of Brian’s humming, how he manages to cut above the too-loud waves. He only vaguely recognizes the song, something off that new Madonna album Brian waited in line for six hours to buy. He concentrates on the song, on Brian, and hopes to God above that the boat docks before he dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They did not invite her to their barbecue. And now she's out for revenge.
> 
> Next time on NYBD!


	7. A Real Dick Move (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pat looks around, makes sure the coast is clear, and takes a step close enough to Brian that would absolutely label him as a queer if anyone besides the dockmaster, who is perpetually drunk enough to lose any credit should he say anything. He loosely puts a hand on Brian’s arm and looks at him as seriously as he can considering the case involves a decapitated dick. 
> 
> “Seriously, I can take this if you need to go home,” he softly says. He flashes a brief smile. “You look like you’re about to fall over, Bri.”
> 
> “I can finish your case for you?” Brian offers. Because, technically, Pat’s supposed to be finishing typing up the report for the kidnapping case he was working on. But where Brian goes, Pat goes, he doesn’t make the rules. Not anymore. 
> 
> Pat rolls his eyes. “Or you could rest.”
> 
> “Or I could finish your case for you.”
> 
> It only takes one second of Brian’s puppy eyes for Pat to cave, so he nods and squeezes Brian’s arm before stepping away and starting back towards the boat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess what? this chapter is so long and stupid, it's going to be in two parts! part two will be next week, which will then be followed by the final chapter(s)
> 
> cws: dickapitation, homophobic language, description of penis

Life is tough when you’re a faggot. The animosity, the hatred, the persecution. But somehow the hardest thing is that Pat can’t hold Brian’s hand out in public, and, boy, he wants to. He wants to show him off to the world, to say, _‘Yeah, this is the love of my life’_. But he can’t, so he settles for holding him in the privacy of his bedroom or the apartment when Daniel isn’t there, or Brian holding him in his apartment when his incredibly shady roommates aren’t there. It isn’t enough; it’s not near enough, but it’s just enough to satiate the touch-starved insect that’s crawled its way into his heart and soul since that first movie night those few months ago. 

Tonight, it’s the two of them “working a case” in Pat’s bedroom, the kitchen being commandeered by his roommate and his roommate’s weird friends. They’re cooking something, maybe. Something that smells a bit too...fleshy to be normal. Whatever. He can deal with Daniel some other time when he’s not cuddling with his partner and reading about another kidnapping case he’s been assigned, one he’s probably going to hand off to someone else as soon as something more interesting comes in. 

Brian yawns, stretches a bit, jostling Pat’s side maybe a bit too obviously. Brat knows he’s ticklish, brat knows there’s company in the other room, brat knows Pat will have to pin him down to get him to stop. And brat is right. Pat growls playfully and grabs Brian’s wrists, holding them tight. Brian winks, and Pat grins. 

“Bored already?” Pat asks. “It’s only six.”

“Not bored,” Brian says. “Just more interested in something else.”

“What could be more interesting than some capitalist getting kidnapped?”

Brian leans in closer, his eyes half-closed. He stops just shy of Pat’s face, seemingly reveling in Pat’s sudden flush. 

“I don’t know,” he whispers, breath warm against Pat’s mouth. “What do you think?”

Pat inhales sharply and jerks himself away, dropping Brian’s wrists and scooting back against the wall. 

“I, uh, don’t know,” he stutters. He swallows and picks the file back up, hiding behind it. “It’s, uh, real interesting stuff.”

Brian crosses his arms and huffs. “Patrick, is this another one of those boundary things that you keep forgetting to tell me about?”

“No. I’m just...doing work?”

Brian flops back, lying down and resting his head within perfect hair-playing-with reach. And of course Pat is going to fall for that bait, how could he not? Brian’s been growing his hair out again, and it, unlike his own, grows quickly. In the couple of months he’s been growing it out, his hair’s grown maybe an inch to Brian’s couple. 

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“There was a question?”

Brian’s eyes flutter shut, and he sighs: “You said we’d talk about it, honey.”

“And we will once there’s something to talk about.”

“Is this what you tell your therapist, or is it reserved for me?”

Pat winces, taking too long to answer. 

“Pat, you’ve been seeing your therapist, haven-”

Pat cuts him off with a hand over the mouth. 

“Wow,” he declares. “this guy had a diamond in his skull. That’s cool.”

Brian licks Pat’s palm, but he doesn’t budge; he’s too used to this game by now. They’ve been playing it for two months now. Brian wants to kiss him, Pat panics and pushes him away, Brian asks if that’s a boundary thing, Pat dances around the question and moves on to something else that’s bound to catch Brian’s attention even though it literally never does. He’s surprised Brian hasn’t called him out on it. Or maybe he has and Pat hasn’t noticed. He’s kind of oblivious. Brian says it’s charming, Pat thinks it makes him an idiot.

From the kitchen, someone screams, and it might be Daniel. Pat has half a mind to go check on them and make sure they haven’t set anything on fire (again), but he also has to read over this very important case and keep physical contact with his partner. 

After a long couple of minutes, Brian removes Pat’s hand and sits up on his elbows, looking at him strangely. 

“I’m sorry,” he softly says, and Pat closes his eyes and puts the file down.

“No, I’m sorry,” he replies, turning his hand so that it’s palm-up and hoping Brian takes it; he does, and Pat gives it a gentle squeeze. “I’ll explain once I know how. It’s hard, you know?”

“Yeah. Just...take care of yourself, okay? You’re important to me.”

“I know. I-” he catches himself before he says it, internally kicking himself. “I appreciate it. You. You’re wonderful.”

“You’re wonderful, too. Let me know when you’ve got the word, alright? I’m making a list.”

Pat snorts, because of course he is. Brian’s a nerd. His nerd. And it’s wonderful. 

He opens his eyes a smidge and ducks closer just long enough to leave a small kiss on Brian’s cheek, nearly passing out in the process because _what if he had missed what if Brian took it further what if-_

Brian brightly smiles and leans his head against Pat’s shoulder. “Tell me more about this diamond, big guy.”

And Pat obliges.

 

-

The first thing he notices about the boat is the strange, faint smell of discount barbecue sauce in the air. The second thing is the dead man lying on the deck, stripped completely naked except for a single white glove covering his nether regions. The third thing is the absurd amount of dead fish piled around the main mast. 

Brian’s standing close to him, nearly pressed against his side. He’s got a hand covering his nose, and his eyes are screwed shut. Pat, after looking around to make sure none of the officers are looking their way, squeezes Brian’s hand once before carefully stepping over the fish to get up close to the body. 

He knows who did this. Anyone who’s been on the force knows who did this. He’s met the culprit several times, barely living to tell the tale. Or, well, not tell it, because she’d dump him into the harbor if he even thought about it. 

He crouches next to the body and pokes it with a gloved finger. It jiggles a bit, and one of the technicians smacks his hand and glares. He winks at her; she scowls, hands him a cotton swab, and goes back to her clipboard. He lifts the edge of the glove with the swab and grimaces.

“What do you think, Gilbert?” he calls over his shoulder. Brian tenses and comes closer, and Pat only feels a bit bad as Brian gags and turns away within moments of seeing the cold, dead, detached penis on display. 

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” Brian coughs. One of the technicians takes pity on him and covers his eyes, still taking pictures of the body with his free hand. 

The dick is fully removed from the rest of its area, sitting neatly on top like it was placed there. And it probably was, because that is not William Smith’s dick. This one is a full three inches and the color of a too-ripe banana. Judging by the extraordinary amount of blood coating the farthest reaches of Smith’s thighs, he almost definitely died by decapitation. 

Pat drops the glove and stands, grabbing a technician and handing her the swab. He hops back over the fish pile and takes Brian out of that technician’s hands, guiding him off the boat and onto the pier, where Brian promptly doubles over and coughs up his breakfast into the sea. Pat pats his back. 

“You good?” he asks. 

“God, no,” Brian spits, falling to his knees and bracing himself on a post to keep himself from falling in. Pat winces and looks away, nods politely to the dockmaster, who is watching from his front porch with a hard glare. “It’s just...who _does that_?”

“Who, me? ‘Cause I’m sorry. I just-”

Brian waves a hand. “No, the...you know. Fuck, I can feel it.”

Pat glances back at the boat and gives a thumbs-up to the few newbies who aren’t used to Ace Detective Gilbert throwing up at the scene of the crime. They just continue awkwardly staring.

“You need to go home? I can take care of this,” Pat asks, turning his attention back to Brian, who’s catching his breath after another round. 

Brian shakes his head. “No, I’m...I’m fine. It’s just a penis.”

“Just a penis,” Pat agrees, his mouth quirking up. “And we haven’t had a good penis case in months.”

“I wouldn’t miss a penis case for anything,” Brian says. He slowly sits himself up and immediately falls backward into Pat’s arms, blinking up at him with a smile. “My hero.”

Pat rolls his eyes and props Brian back upright, patting his cheek for good measure, grinning at Brian’s blush. The dockmaster harrumphs, and Pat very briefly considers turning around and shooting him. But that’s the stress getting to him. 

“Tell you what,” Pat says. “I look at the penis, you take care of all the fish.”

Brian takes one look back up at the boat and pales even further. “If you insist.”

Pat looks around, makes sure the coast is clear, and takes a step close enough to Brian that would absolutely label him as a queer if anyone besides the dockmaster, who is perpetually drunk enough to lose any credit should he say anything. He loosely puts a hand on Brian’s arm and looks at him as seriously as he can considering the case involves a decapitated dick. 

“Seriously, I can take this if you need to go home,” he softly says. He flashes a brief smile. “You look like you’re about to fall over, Bri.”

“I can finish your case for you?” Brian offers. Because, technically, Pat’s supposed to be finishing typing up the report for the kidnapping case he was working on. But where Brian goes, Pat goes, he doesn’t make the rules. Not anymore. 

Pat rolls his eyes. “Or you could rest.”

“Or I could finish your case for you.”

It only takes one second of Brian’s puppy eyes for Pat to cave, so he nods and squeezes Brian’s arm before stepping away and starting back towards the boat. 

“Anyone got a dick-sized evidence bag?”

-

That night, Pat takes Brian out for ice cream to make up for showing him a dick. He knows he’ll regret it in about five hours when he’s curled up on the bathroom floor crying, but Brian doesn’t need to know that. 

“You wanna go see a movie this weekend?” Brian asks. He licks the side of his cone to catch a drip, and Pat finds himself a bit too preoccupied to answer. Brian raises an eyebrow, amused. “Pat?”

Pat startles, almost dropping his own cone. He sinks back into his side of the booth and hopes it’ll swallow him up. 

“Uh,” he says, almost certain he’s going to melt his ice cream with how warm he’s getting. “Maybe? What are you thinking?”

“Dunno.” Brian shrugs, taking another long, long lick with a knowing smirk. “Figured we’d go and see what’s playing.”

“Uh,” Pat manages. He nods once and barely notices the ice cream dripping down off of his own cone and onto his fingers. “Good idea.”

“Who knows? Maybe we’ll get up to some naughty business. Maybe I could sit on your lap and block your view.”

“Uh-huh. Great.”

“And then you could tell me how beautiful I am.”

“Of course.”

A drop of Pat’s ice cream lands on his lap and he jumps at the sudden cold, grabbing a napkin and dabbing at his lap. Brian breaks into a peal of laughter that would normally take Pat’s breath away if he wasn’t busy cleaning himself up. God, these slacks are ruined. Fuck, they were expensive, too. He’s going to have to go shopping. Fuck, Brian would probably go along, and Pat really doesn’t look good in florals.

Brian wheezes and hands him another napkin. “Goddamn, Pat Gill, you coming down with something?” 

“Cold,” Pat says simply, his face as red as a firetruck. If anyone else is in this place at nine at night, they’re watching better tv than anything that’s on right now. 

“Poor thing.”

“I might need to get it checked out.”

“I’m sure you will, Pat.”

Brian reaches across the table and plucks Pat’s ice cream out of his hand, his own cone finished. Pat lets him; less pain later on.

“You know,” Brian says, mouth full. “you really need to get laid.”

Pat tenses. “I do not.”

“You really do. You’re so tense, Patrick. I could bounce a dime off those shoulders of yours.”

Pat shoots him the sharpest glare he can muster. “Wanna bet?”

Brian, to his credit, flinches. “I mean, yeah. You need a break.”

“A sex break. Me.”

He hopes he conveys an attitude of _I am never having sex again_ , but he knows he doesn’t. Brian wouldn’t understand it. He doesn’t know what Jim did. He never will. But Pat can hope that he gets a clue. For someone so smart, he’s kind of a dumbass.

“Or a regular break,” Brian quickly says. “Take a few weeks off. Go back north for a few days. Read a book. Clean your goddamn apartment.”

Pat sighs. “I get what you’re saying. But I’m fine, Brian. Honest.”

“You look like a raccoon that fell into a biker bar and never recovered.”

“How did you know my tragic backstory?”

Brian snorts and finishes up Pat’s ice cream. “Whatever, Rocket. Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

Pat rolls his eyes, nods, and reaches across the table to wipe a smudge of ice cream off the corner of Brian’s mouth. It’s late, there’s no one else in the place, and that smudge was really bothering him. Really. Totally wasn’t an excuse to touch Brian’s face. 

Brian kisses Pat’s finger, and Pat, much like his ice cream, melts. 

-

Trying to track down the enigma known as Pam Rozhdestvenskaya is maybe one of the most difficult things Pat’s ever done. Not because it’s hard, per se, as she practically owns the part of the city Pat’s apartment complex is in. All he would have to do is ask the mailman for her, and she’d be on his doorstep within hours. But, despite how it may appear these days, he does have a will to live, so he has to settle for staking the neighborhood playground out and waiting. 

During his third hour of sitting on a park bench pretending to get through War and Peace, someone sits next to him. He glances out of the corner of his eye and wills his hands to not shake. 

“Officer Gill,” Hogan politely greets. He holds his hands in his lap daintily, not at all acting the seven-foot giant he is. 

“Hogan,” Pat nods. He licks his fingers and turns the page. “Your wife in town? I need to ask her a few questions.”

“Nothing bad, I’d hope.”

“Just some questions, then she’s free to go.”

Pat winces behind his sunglasses as something cold and hard presses into his side. 

“She’s not a big fan of questions,” Hogan says. “What would be in it for her?”

“My partner’s working on a case down by the docks. Beetle smuggling, if you’d believe it.” Lie. “I can get him to drop the case.”

Hogan hums, low and unpronounced. It’s Madonna, Pat knows. Brian was singing it last night as Pat walked him home from the ice cream parlor. 

“She’ll see,” Hogan eventually says, and Pat lets out a long breath. 

“I’m off Saturday, but she can come in any time other than that,” Pat says. He flinches as a little girl screams as she goes down the slide a few feet away. 

Hogan departs without a word, and Pat soon after. He tucks the book under his arm and shoves his hands in his pockets, staring at the sidewalk. He has to see his therapist today. He might cancel. He will cancel. 

It’s not like Dr. Frank is a _bad_ therapist, really. She’s just too good at her job. Within minutes of meeting him, she was writing down a prescription for some medication that he keeps conveniently forgetting to take. By the end of that first session, she had forced him to ask Tara for time off and had scheduled him for some group therapy sessions that he keeps conveniently forgetting to go to. She managed to see through every one of his lies without even trying, and he hates her for it, because he had managed to convince himself of them. That this current fling with a coworker (whose name and pronouns he carefully leaves out of every conversation) is a good thing, that he should be allowed to relax once in a while, that whatever Jim did to him on the way to that boat didn’t matter. And it is a good thing, he is allowed to relax, and it doesn’t matter. Once he convinces Dr. Frank of that last bit, it should be smooth sailing. 

He bumps into someone on the walk and quietly apologizes, awkwardly scooting around them and continuing on his way. Except he doesn’t get anywhere because they grabbed his arm, and he recognizes that grip. 

“Detective Gill, what a surprise!” Dr. Frank exclaims, absolutely not sounding surprised. He scowls and tugs his arm away, immediately putting that scowl away when he sees the look on her face. 

“Hi, Dr. Frank,” he politely says. He tilts his head down the walk. “I’ve gotta…”

She shakes her head, curls bouncing out of her ponytail as she does so. “Your appointment’s in ten minutes, detective.”

“Then why are you across town?”

“Oh, just taking a walk,” she shrugs. “Care to walk with me?”

He pushes down a _not really_ and begrudgingly nods, turning around and following her down the street. Her office is up in Manhattan, one of those fancy places Pat used to dream of going to back when he was a bit worse off than he currently is. The only reason he’s able to afford these sessions is that he’s only gone to two out of the eight so far. Make this one three. Normally he grabs himself an ice cream and hides out for an hour or two until the coast is clear and he can go back to work and dance around Tara’s (admittedly caring) questions. No such luck today. 

“Nice day, isn’t it?” she asks. He grunts. “Aren’t you in a good mood today?”

“Just tired,” he sighs, feigning a yawn. She rolls her eyes. “What? Detective-ing is very hard work.”

“So’s bullshitting.”

“I’m not bullshitting.”

“Sure you aren’t, detective. Just like how you keep forgetting to come to the meetings.”

“I’m very busy.”

“With that coworker? How’s it going there?”

He finds himself smiling despite his best attempts to stay a stone-cold badass. “We got ice cream last night.”

She hums, and he quickly realizes that this is a session. That’s her therapy hum. Fuck. He drops his smile and fakes another yawn. 

“You know, I really should get home,” he says. “I’m beat.”

“It’s eleven in the morning, Patrick.”

“I’m tired,” he shrugs. 

She snorts. “Yeah, right. I know what you’re trying, detective, and it ain’t working. You’re going to get help no matter what you try.”

He frowns. “That doesn’t seem quite legal, Dr. Frank.”

“And what are you going to do about it?”

“Arrest you. For, like, stalking me.”

“It’s not stalking if your boss asked me to do it.”

He huffs, just imagining the look on Tara’s face. It’s smug, and he hates it. “Yeah, still is.”

“Besides, I’ve missed our conversations. How long’s it been, a month?”

Long enough that he doesn’t remember what the inside of her office looks like. Exactly as it should be.

He stiffly nods. “I was going to go last week.”

“Sure you were, detective,” she sighs. “Why aren’t you coming?”

“Can’t afford it?” he attempts, shrinking back under her sharp gaze. 

“You know the city pays for it,” she snaps. “Try something better.”

“I...I just don’t need it. This. Doctor.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Detective, you and I both know you need this. It’s for the good of your-”

“I’m doing fine,” he interrupts. “Look at me, the very picture of mental health!”

He raises his arms and drops his book. He blushes slightly and stoops down to get it. 

“Right,” she drawls. “I see those circles under your eyes. You been sleeping alright, detective?”

He winces. “It’s been fine.”

She rolls her eyes. “Sure. You still dreaming about-”

He jumps and shushes her, looking around. This is still Pam’s territory, and God knows she doesn’t need anything else to torment him with. She raises an eyebrow, and he gives up. 

“Can we talk about this in the office?” he tiredly asks. 

She grins. “Why, I thought you’d never ask.”

-

Two days after William Smith’s body was found, his wife is found tied to the front of the mayor’s newest yacht like some kind of demented figurehead. Honestly, Pat would be a fan of it if it wasn’t his case. Stick it to the Man, and all that. But Fagan had immediately ordered Tara to order Pat onto this case, as if he wasn’t already working on it before his royal highness had gotten involved. What followed was a very long rant about the safety of his city, how Pat and Brian should be honored to be working on this case, how Brian and Pat both need haircuts, how Pat needs to shave, how this horrible case needs to be solved as soon as possible.

“He’s an ass,” Brian comments as soon as Fagan’s out the door. 

Pat snorts and nods, thumbing through the updated file. Brian hops up and sits on the edge of Pat’s desk, reading over his shoulder, his hair just barely brushing against Pat’s cheek. New shampoo, Pat notes. Strawberry. Much more important than whatever the hell’s going on with Pam and her merry band of miscreants. 

Mary Anne Smith was found the same way as her husband: naked with only her hair covering her breasts and a glove duct taped to her privates and the letter ‘P’ cut into her chest. And tied to the front of a rich asshole’s yacht the same was as a trucker ties a teddy bear to the front of his rig. Otherwise, again, no visible wounds. Unlike her husband, all of her privates remained intact. Really begs the question as to whose penis that was on Mr. Smith and where his original member is. 

Brian reaches past him to turn the page, his fingers brushing against Pat’s cheek, and Pat just about swoons right there. God, he’s out of it. Exhausted. He had stayed up all night cleaning and counting out the new pills Dr. Frank had ordered in for him, something meant to help him sleep. He had finished counting them, all 30, before shoving them back in their bottle and shoving them in the back of the medicine cabinet with the rest of the medications he’s supposed to be taking. He almost fell asleep during Fagan’s rant. He’s going to fall asleep any minute now unless he can find something to occupy himself that isn’t murder. 

He suppresses a yawn and leans his head against the side of Brian’s leg. “Think we can find the dickless dude before the weekend?”

Brian chuckles and shakes his head. “I bet that guy’s in the harbor.”

“Think we should bother getting someone to check down there?”

Brian shrugs. “Worth a shot.”

“And whose dick is it?” he muses, not expecting an answer. He taps his pen against his bottom lip. “It says here the Smiths had a son. You think it’s his?”

Brian shakes his head. “Too pale.”

“I mean, we don’t know about cock rotting. Maybe a dismembered member just squishes like that.”

Brian gags, and Pat winks up at him. 

“God, _gross_ , dude,” Brian complains. “You’re gross.”

“It’s _science_ , Brian, isn’t that your thing?”

“Not penis science!”

“You sure about that?” Pat challenges, wiggling his eyebrows, only complaining a little as Brian pushes him and his chair away. 

“Pat, Patrick, why?” Brian moans. 

Pat rolls his chair back to his desk, only halfway ignoring Clayton’s owl-like stare from two desks over. He’s tired, he should be allowed to fuck with his very platonic male friend. He bumps back up against Brian’s leg, and Brian half-heartedly nudges him away. 

“Gimme that,” he grumbles, smiling widely, snatching the file out of Pat’s hand and flipping through it. “Who’re our suspects?”

Top of the list is Pam Rozhdestvenskaya, and right below that is her husband, Gerald “Trash” Hogan. God, Pat doesn’t hope it was her. He really doesn’t want to deal with the Russians breathing down his neck, not now when he’s barely getting enough sleep as it is. Below them are a couple of the Smiths’ neighbors, and, right at the bottom, two brothers who had been seen near Fagan’s yacht the day before Mrs. Smith was found there. 

“It’ll be hard to track Rozhdestvenskaya down,” Pat notes, hoping to God above that she isn’t even in the city. He frowns. “We could go for the McElroys. They’re still in the neighborhood, I think.”

Brian’s eyes widen. “Really?”

Pat nods. “Either that or one of the neighbors.”

“Let’s see about the McElroys. Justin first, maybe.”

“Nah, Griffin’s easier.”

Brian tilts his head. “You knew them?”

Pat yawns and stretches, noting how Brian’s eyes linger on the sliver of skin showing between his shirt and slacks. Useful for later. When he’s more than a living, walking corpse. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I was here when it went down.”

He remembers it like it was yesterday, mostly because he was just downstairs when the explosion went off.

“Holy shit,” Brian whispers. He grins widely. “You’re old as fuck!”

Pat huffs. “I’m thirty-one.”

“So old, so wise,” Brian says. He sighs. “I’ll bet you’ll be going grey soon.”

Pat taps a white patch on his beard, and Brian, for lack of a better word, swoons, leaning back against the desk and sighing dreamily. 

Pat’s about to say something extremely charming, yet equally platonic, when the door slams open and in walks in the ugliest woman this side of the Bering Strait. 

“Officer Gill!” she greets, her lips peeling back from her face in an attempted facsimile of a smile. She’s in her red dress today, the sunglasses on her face still with the price tag on the side. Behind her is Hogan and another man, this one with a large, bushy mustache that Pat hopes Brian doesn’t take inspiration from. 

Pat wheels his chair in front of Brian as she approaches, her footsteps being the only noise in the now-silent room. 

“Miss Rozhdestvenskaya,” he politely says, desperately trying to force the waver out of his voice. His tongue trips over her name, and she laughs, a loud, bellowing noise that reminds him of two dinosaurs fucking. “I’m glad you could make it. This is my, uh, my partner.”

She snaps a gloved finger, and his mouth snaps shut. She extends a hand to Brian over Pat’s shoulder. 

“I am Pam,” she purrs. She hums as Brian awkwardly takes it, shakes it. “Pleasure is yours.”

“Sure is,” Brian nervously laughs. “I, uh, you wanna do? Questions, I mean. Not, uh. Yeah.”

Pam squeezes his hand so tight Pat can hear his bones popping, and she barks out another laugh. “Let us start. Detective Gill, show me to the room, if you would please do so.”

Pat immediately nods and scoots his chair to his left so he can get up, rolling over the mustachioed fellow’s foot in the process. He hisses out an apology and stands, smoothing out the front of his shirt. He grabs his notebook and recorder off the desk and smiles, showing too many teeth. God, why couldn’t he have seen Dr. Frank after this?

Brian moves to hop off the desk, but Hogan puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes his head. Pam’s other man shoots Pat a sharp glare. 

“This way,” Pat says as calmly as he can manage, leading the way back to the interrogation room, hoping that Hogan doesn’t snap Brian’s neck while his back is turned. 

-

“July twenty-second, 1983. Please state your name.”

Pam sneers, and Pat clears his throat and decides to move on. 

“Could you please tell me where you were the morning of July twentieth?”

“West Virginia. I had to take care some...competition.”

He thinks he remembers seeing that on the news while trying to avoid watching the news. Freddy something, maybe. 

He nods. “Great, great.”

“Is that all?” she asks. “I have alibi, yes?”

“What about your husband? He was up here, wasn’t he?”

“Which one?”

He blinks. “Which…”

“Trash Hogan was with me. Jerry was in England.”

“Is Jerry the…” he trails off, miming a mustache with one hand. 

She cackles and slams her fist on the metal table, sending the tape recorder a couple of inches into the air. 

“Yes, yes, metal husband! Big steel guy, you know him.”

Pat, in fact, does not know him, but he isn’t sure he wants to. 

“Am I correct in assuming that none of your boys were involved in these murders?”

She nods. “The Smiths were waste of time. I gave up on them years ago.”

“Why were they a waste of time?”

“Next question.”

He sighs, “Miss Rozhdestvenskaya, we’re almost done.”

“Yes, we are. You ask question, my beetles go free.”

He was honestly guessing about the beetles. Go figure. Too late now to send someone down to look into it, though. 

“Of course. I’m just trying to prove you innocent, that’s all.”

“Oh, I am innocent.”

“And I’m trying to prove that. If you could just-”

She crashes her fist down upon the tape recorder, and Pat drops his pen, stands, and goes for his gun. But, instead of going further, she sits back in her chair and smiles up at him.

“You have lovely boy friend, yes?” she asks, picking at a loose thread on her left glove, her sunglasses glinting in the harsh lights. “Would be real shame if he went bad.”

“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to-”

“You are in no position to ask of me anything. I ask question now. Why would I put body on mayor’s boat?”

“You wouldn’t,” Pat acknowledges. He inches towards the door, hand still at the ready. “And I’m trying to prove that.”

“You seem like you are trying to convict me.”

“I’m not. I’m just-”

Before he can finish, she’s across the room and pressing him to the wall, holding him off the ground with a single hand around the throat. He chokes out a weak scream as she uses her other hand to twist his arm until he hears a too-loud snap and his arm locks in place. 

“You have death wish, Detective Gill?” she growls, her face just inches from his. He barely registers it, his entire brain focused on the red-hot streaks of pain radiating from his elbow, a numbness starting to spread from his neck. “You are brave today.”

He wheezes, and she sneers and digs her nails in, her thumb pressing a bruise into his neck that feels familiar, yet unfamiliar. 

“Trash Hogan had nothing to do with this. Jerry was with me. You insult my family again, I take care of yours.”

Pat can faintly hear a pounding at the door, someone who might be Jeff calling in from the outside. Pam gives Pat’s throat one last squeeze before dropping him. He falls right to the ground, just barely avoiding the gun, and he just decides to lie down. He won’t be much help, anyway, and also his head hurts, and also he’s been choked times to know when not to do anything for a couple of minutes and let his body scream. 

“We are done here,” he hears, and then footsteps out, and then maybe-Jeff saying something, but his brain is too tired to register anything but a cold purple feeling.


	8. A Real Dick Move (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can’t read,” he says, and Brian groans and throws his head back. 
> 
> “Goddamnit, Patrick."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the second part of case four! sorry about the lack of interlude/commercial break this week because with a two parter like this, it didn't make sense to have something in the middle. there should be one this week, and then the final chapter (hopefully, unless my traitor brain decides otherwise). i hope the vampire one-off i wrote sort of makes up for it, and i have something coming down the pipeline that should be like. fun. love you guys, i'm very tired, enjoy the chapter!
> 
> also uhhh this chapter is not quite betad because my lovely beta is doing life! give them love in your hearts!

The thing about Pam isn’t that she’s terrifying beyond all comprehension. It’s that she takes care of him better than his mom ever did. He’s found her boys in the lobby of his apartment building so many times he’s lost count. He was out with the flu for a week a couple of years ago and Hogan himself was at his door with a pot of chicken noodle soup and a fake smile, quickly turning into a real smile as Charlie peeked out from behind Pat’s legs.

“Us at the precinct,” Griffin had told him once, back when Pat was a uniform and Griffin was his weird boss. “We’re her boys. We don’t mess with her, she keeps us safe.”

And Young Pat had just nodded and gone along with it, because what else could he do? 

-

“She didn’t do it!” he insists, immediately breaking down into a cough as pain radiates from his throat. Brian, across the table from him, sighs pityingly and gets up to get him a fresh glass of water. 

After being released from the hospital with a bill that Pat knows he’s never going to be able to pay off, he and Brian went to Brian’s apartment to talk over the case. Or, more accurately, try and talk over the case while Brian tries to get him to go home and get some rest. But like hell he’s going to sleep. He hasn’t slept in two months, not like he’s going to start now that he has a reason to. 

He takes the offered glass with a shaky hand and, instead of drinking it, puts it on the table next to his empty glass and holds up a photo of Mrs. Smith’s body as it was posed on the yacht, shoves it towards Brian, who takes it and immediately puts it back down. Pat picks it up again. 

“It’s...it’s too perfect! She wouldn’t have done it like this. She would’ve dumped her in the harbor.”

“Pat-”

Pat digs around in the messy pile of papers strewn haphazardly across the table and pulls out a picture of Mr. Smith, the pile of dead fish in the background. 

Pat taps his cast against it pointedly. “And the fish-”

“You already told me about the fish.”

“-they’re not right. Like, what the fuck is up with the fish, Brian?”

“I don’t know, Pat. What do you think is up with the fish?”

“I don’t know!” Pat laughs. He shakes his head, laughs again, winces as his laugh registers with his already-provoked vocal cords and as they, in turn, scream at him. “But it isn’t her.”

“Okay, it wasn’t her. Who was it, then?”

Pat pauses, and Brian takes the photo out of his hand and puts it back on the table. He slides a chair over and sits, his knees pressing against Pat’s leg. 

“Look, Pat, I get what you’re trying to say here. It wasn’t her, it was someone trying to be her. But, like, chill. You’ve had a long day. Just take a minute to just breathe.”

Pat shakes his head. “You don’t understand. The son’s still left. We need to figure this out before he’s gone, too.”

“They won’t kill the son.”

“How do you know? We don’t even know who did it!”

Brian grabs his notepad and thumbs back a few pages, landing on one and handing it over. It’s chicken scratch, really, just a bunch of random words scattered around the page, a few numbers, and a very detailed drawing of Zuko napping. His brain hurts just looking at it, or maybe that’s just his head continuing to protest him still being awake, so he puts the notebook on the table and crosses his arms as best he can. 

“I can’t read,” he says, and Brian groans and throws his head back. 

“Goddamnit, Patrick, will you go get some sleep already?”

“It’s.” He checks the clock, realizes he can’t stay focused on it longer than a second, and turns back to Brian. “It’s too early. We can figure it out, then go to bed. Promise.”

“No ‘promise’, Pat.” Brian huffs, his jaw clenching. Pat only scoots his chair away a little. “I know you want to save the kid. And we will. But you can’t do jack shit if you’re dead.”

“It’s not like I’ll be doing anything, anyway! Look at me, Brian, I’ve got a busted arm and fucked up throat! I’ve gotta do this. It’s all I can do right now.”

“You can also, I don’t know, rest?”

“I’ll ‘rest’ after this case.”

“That’s what you said last time!”

“And that’s what I did.”

Brian rolls his eyes. “Oh, yeah, like an hour was a proper rest.”

“I took a nap.”

“You pretended to take a nap. I was there.” He pulls his glasses off and scrubs his face, his hands settling over his eyes. “I’m worried about you, babe.”

“And I’m fine,” Pat assures, not feeling fine in the slightest. Ever since he regained consciousness, his brain has been in a weird fuzzy state where all he can do it stare at something and will a vague thought into existence. He saw Brian and immediately thought _mustache_. He saw Pam being corralled into the holding cell and immediately thought _ouch_. He saw the pictures of the two dead bodies and found a vague connection, a simple _weird_. The entire...however, the amount of time he’s been sitting at Brian’s kitchen table has consisted entirely of him trying to formulate a real connection. 

“You aren’t,” Brian moans, pressing down onto his eyes and sitting back up, dropping his hands and shuffling all the papers into a loose pile, ignoring Pat’s complaints. He slams the file shut and slides his glasses back on. He grabs Pat’s chair and slowly begins pulling it out of the kitchen and into the rest of the apartment, a horrible, horrible screeching sound setting Pat’s teeth on edge and sending Zuko zipping under the couch to hide. 

Pat stands once he realizes what Brian’s pulling and staggers as all the blood suddenly rushes to his head. Brian catches his good arm on his way down and pulls him back up and to his side, lifting him up with a groan and catching him with his other arm, then continuing across the apartment. Pat’s first thought is that this is maybe one of the most attractive things that Brian has ever done. The second is that, wait, no, this is kidnapping.

Pat wiggles. “Brian, what the fuck?”

Brian gets to his bedroom and uses Pat’s foot to turn the knob. “You’re a dumbass, and I’m calling Simone.”

Pat pales. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“You sure? Prove it.” Brian sets him down on the bed and backs away. “You get over here without stumbling, and I’ll bring you the file and leave you to it.”

Pat’s legs immediately tell him that he should not do this, and the rest of his body echoes the sentiment. And, honestly, Brian’s too far away to jump to. Or walk to. But he tries, anyway, standing and immediately tumbling back down, catching his elbow right above the cast on the bed frame. He lets out a choked cry and curls his other hand into a tight fist.

“You’re taking tomorrow off,” Brian sighs, resting his hand on the back of his neck and shaking his head. “Christ, Pat, I thought we were done with this.”

“I’m getting better?” he offers, voice laced with the worst pain he’s felt in a couple of hours. 

“Bullshit.” Brian crosses the room and sits on the bed by Pat’s feet, his hands in his lap. _Hands in lap_ … “I’m being serious when I say you need a break. You-”

“Oh my God, they cut his dick off.”

Brian cuts off, takes a moment to breathe, and looks at Pat like he’s hearing that the sky’s green. “What?”

“Trash Hogan. He’s missing his dick.”

Brian blinks. “Okay. What does that-”

Pat sits up and winces as another rush of blood hits him. “It, fuck, this morning. He sat strangely. His dick’s gone.”

“Pat, I think you need some sleep.”

Pat waves his good hand and shakes his head. “Give me a minute, I’ve got something here. Pam said he was in West Virginia with her, but what if he wasn’t?”

“I’ll check in the morning. Now will you just-”

“And what if the other husband was in on it? He was supposedly in England, but who the fuck knows that for certain?”

“Are you trying to tell me that the husbands worked together to kill two of Pam’s least favorite people? And that they didn’t tell her?”

“They did tell her, that’s the thing. Or, well, Hogan did. He’s never been able to hide anything from her. Trust me, Clayton’s been their marriage counselor for years now.”

“So why did they pretend that she did it?”

Pat shrugs, grinning widely. “I haven’t figured that out.”

Brian rolls his eyes and gently pushes him back down. “Figure it out in the morning. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Pat’s still thinking when Brian comes back from the bathroom, though that quickly changes when he notices the distinct lack of shirt. 

“Close your mouth, you’re gonna catch flies,” Brian teases, sliding into bed next to him. 

Pat manages to tear his gaze away and stare up at the ceiling. And, honestly, Pat doesn’t need sleep to relax, not when his pain has him on a high and Brian is right next to him. But it comes to him, anyway, and, for the first time in months, he isn’t greeted by Jim Horace’s wandering hands. 

-

The next day finds him sleeping until two in the afternoon. He wakes up to Zuko trying to eat his beard and the sounds of Brian’s roommates arguing in the other room. Something about short people, maybe. Laura’s short. It fits. 

He gently shoves Zuko off his chest and onto the bed and sits up, stretches, regrets everything once his left arm moves. Lies back down and lets Zuko resume his snack. He needed to shave, anyway.

-

Brian comes in bearing gifts of a gallon of sweet tea and a bag of McDonald’s for them to split. Pat ignores the tea, but his curiosity is piqued by this box of “nuggets” Brian got for him to try. He sits up in bed as much as he can without annoying Zuko too much, Brian sitting criss-cross a couple of inches away making his way through a thick burger.

“Talked to Hogan,” Brian says around a mouthful of burger. He winces and covers his mouth, swallows, and continues. “Sorry. I talked to Hogan. He-”

Pat frowns. “How’d you get a hold of him?”

“Laura. Anyway, he said he was with Pam that day. So I looked into that Slimeburger’s death, and-”

“His name was Slimeburger?” Pat laughs. He pops a “nugget” into his mouth and immediately swoons, leaning back against the bed frame and moaning. “Holy shit, dude, you gotta try one of these.”

Brian rolls his eyes. “Let me finish, and I might. Anyway, Hogan wasn’t even in the area. He was up here smuggling beetles for _some_ reason. And the other guy seems to have gotten back from England the day of Mary Anne’s murder. Not sure about that one, private jet and all.”

Pat smiles. “So I was right.”

“Maybe. We still don’t have a motive.”

“Lemme at Jerry for ten minutes, and you’ll get one.”

“Pat, no, you’re resting, remember?”

“Ten minutes, Brian, come on.”

“No.”

Pat grumbles and chews on another nugget. “This is homophobia.”

“This is concern,” Brian corrects. He picks a pickle off his burger and slurps it up with an exaggerated noise that he knows Pat hates more than anything else. Brat. He smirks. “Besides, you’d miss out on your nugget time.”

Pat narrows his eyes and pulls the nugget container to his chest. “Never.”

“Then you will stay here and rest up. Zuko needs a friend.”

“Your sister’s home.”

“A different friend. That isn’t Jonah. He’s mad at Jonah.” Brian scratches between his cat’s ears. “Aren’t you, buddy?”

Zuko yawns and steals a bite of cheese, and Brian yanks his burger away and takes a possessive bite. Pat snorts and has another nugget, because _holy shit_. 

“Zuko’s just hungry, aren’t you, buddy?” Pat coos, holding out a fry. Brian smacks his hand.

“No, bad Patrick,” he snaps.

“You’re just jealous I won’t feed you,” Pat says.

Brian looks at him, pained. “What does that even _mean_?”

Pat shrugs and offers out a peaceful nugget. Brian stares at it a moment before shrugging, leaning over, and biting in. His reaction is not nearly as exciting as Pat hoped it would be. 

“I mean, it’s fine,” he shrugs, and Pat gapes. 

“ _‘Fine’_? It’s, like, pure beauty. God gave this to McDonald’s, Brian, this is the heavenly host modernized.”

Brian takes the rest of his nugget out of Pat’s fingers and finishes it. “I think you need more sleep.”

Pat shudders. “No, thank you. I’d like to keep my beard, thank you very much.”

“It is a very handsome beard.”

“Tell that to your cat.”

Brian, very seriously, leans down so that he’s face-to-face with Zuko, and he says, “Pat’s beard is very handsome. Don’t eat it.”

Zuko narrows his eyes and hops off the bed, padding to the door and meowing. Brian sighs and takes another bite of his burger, crawls off the bed, and lets him out. As he’s distracted, Pat snags a few of his fries and adds them to his own container. 

Brian settles back down, moving further up the bed so that he and Pat are side by side, their arms pressing against each other. Well, Brian’s arm to Pat’s cast. 

“You know,” Pat says after a long moment of deciding whether or not to bring this up at all. “If Hogan loved his wife as much as he claims to, he would tell us anything we want in order to get her out of prison.”

Brian stills. “Pat, no. She-”

“She wouldn’t stay in there long, anyway, you know they’d let her out eventually. But he doesn’t have to know that. You get Tara to get her transferred somewhere he can’t get to, say, the Village, and offer him a deal. He talks, and she gets proven innocent.”

“How would that even happen? You two were alone in a room, and you came out with a broken tape-recorder among...other things.”

Pat shrugs. “Maybe I tripped.”

He’s used the excuse before and in worse, more obvious circumstances. And, sure, Tara wouldn’t believe it, but she actually notices things, unlike half the fucking idiots at the precinct. But she doesn’t have to believe it. She just has to pretend to for long enough for Brian to get a confession. 

Brian groans and drops his head against Pat’s, says, “It won’t work, and, _God_ , you need a shower.”

“Not my fault someone kept me on bedrest all day.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Your idea.”

Brian makes no attempt to move. He finishes his burger and crumples up the wrapper, dropping it into Pat’s still-full nugget box. 

“I’ll bring it up to Tara tomorrow,” Brian sighs. He taps Pat’s cast with a single painted nail (strawberry-red this week). “If you behave, you might get to be there.”

Pat perks up. “What do I need to do?”

Brian hesitates before chuckling and brushing some of Pat’s hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. “Promise me you’ll get to your goddamn therapist. I’m only one guy.”

Pat sighs and stares down at his nuggets. “It’s not like she helps, anyway.”

“Maybe not, but it would make me feel a lot better. And you want me to feel good, don’t you, Pat Gill?” Brian asks, accentuating Pat’s name with a kiss to the temple. Pat, frankly, melts, dropping the box into his lap and sighing contentedly. “Found your weak spot, huh?”

“ _Please_ do that again.”

“I will if you promise to go to therapy.”

“Worth it.”

Brian shakes his head fondly and kisses him again, and Pat’s eyelids flutter and he hums. Something in the fog beginning to cover his mind supplies him with chocolate for some ungodly reason, and it fits. Brian is the personification of white chocolate: basic, sweet, beautiful. And is exactly what Pat needs right now, other than more medicine and another full night’s rest and his cat. 

“Get over here,” he mutters, loosely grabbing a chunk of Brian’s hair and pulling him closer, close enough for Pat to press a kiss to the corner of Brian’s mouth. Not on it, he’s safe if it isn’t direct, but just close enough. The mustache tickles, but that’s fine. Brian has to deal with Pat’s stubble, Pat can deal with a caterpillar. His heart beats faster and his brain is clearing, and he can almost feel _his_ hands on his neck and in his hair and he feels the urge to tear himself away and hide, but he focuses, and he sees Brian, and he feels _safe_. 

Brian’s face is the color of bubblegum and his eyes are wide in shock, but he’s smiling, so that counts for something, probably. 

“Do I get to go in for interrogation tomorrow?” Pat asks, voice low, smiling as Brian’s lightly pushes him away. 

“You,” Brian stammers, still smiling widely. “You. You are a menace. You dirty old man, how- how dare you manipulate me like that?”

“So is that a yes?”

“Kiss me again, and we’ll see.”

And so Pat does, same place as before, and he gets his answer.

-

Pat takes Jerry in one room while Brian works on Hogan in the other. He has to have someone else taking notes for him, and Tara has helpfully volunteered one of the uniforms from downstairs. Thompson, Pat thinks. He’s new. Pat doesn’t know him. It’s probably for the better. 

“July twenty-fourth, 1983. Please state your name.”

“Jerry Russel,” the other man sniffs, and Pat hates him immediately. 

Russel looks the part of a proper British gentleman, complete with a monocle and a cane leaning against the table. His suit is the same color as a dead pigeon, and it’s as pressed as can be, the creases on his sleeves probably able to give Pat a papercut. His mustache is, again, something to die for. Probably literally. There might be a raccoon living under all that grease. His hair is as grey as his suit with speckles of white on his sideburns. If Pat was older and into stuck-up bastards, he’d be into him. He can say that now that he isn’t in complete denial, remaining only in slight denial.

Pat nods to Thompson to start taking notes, and he begins. 

“Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself, Mr. Russel. Miss Rozhdestvenskaya told me you work over in England, mostly, is that correct?”

“It is. We’re entering the robotics industry.”

Pat fights the urge to roll his eyes. Like that’s ever going to take off. 

“She told me you were in England doing your thing while she was in West Virginia.”

Russel stiffens ever so slightly. If Pat was writing notes, he wouldn’t have noticed. Thank God for small blessings. 

“I was on my way over there, yes.” He pulls out a handkerchief and coughs into it. “Got back the other day right before escorting Pamela to this station, in fact.”

“Is that so? How was the flight?”

“It was, well, a flight, I suppose. Rather normal.”

“Yeah, I haven’t flown in years. Does your company work with flying robots, too? Or just the regular ones?”

Russel shoots him a harsh glare. “Detective, it would do you kindly not to insult my business, lest your other arm join its brother. I was in the army, you know.”

Pat clicks his tongue. “Hear that, Thompson? Threatening a police officer?”

“Yes, sir,” Thompson agrees, bobbing his head up and down enthusiastically, a smile on his face. “You gonna book him?”

Pat shakes his head, frowning. “Of course not. I’m not done with him yet. Now, Mr. Russel, how did you meet Miss Rozhdestvenskaya?”

“It was a few months ago. She and Trash came to my factory, see, and asked if any of my machines could shoot. Love at first sight, I suppose.”

“Heartwarming. And what exactly is your relation to the two of them?”

“I am their business partner,” Russel says. He purses his lips for just a moment, licks them, and continues. “She and I have, erm, made contact on a few occasions. But that’s it.”

Yuck. 

“Right. And what about with Mr. Hogan?”

“What about him?”

“What is your relation with him?”

“We have none,” Russel snaps. “Get your mind out of the gutter, detective.”

Pat raises an eyebrow. “So you two…”

Russel’s face settles into a deep, deep frown, the tiniest amount of pink poking through all the wrinkles. “We did nothing of the sort.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Russel, this is a safe space. Nothing gets out of here except what I deem fit. Isn’t that right, Thompson?”

Thompson nods. “Of course.”

“Good guy, Thompson,” Pat nods, flinching at the guy’s smile. It’s gross, nothing like Brian’s smile. Too...there. “Now, uh, Mr. Russel, please continue.”

Russel takes a while to respond, busy coughing into his hankie like a TB victim. But, when he does answer, it’s exactly what Pat needs to hear. 

“Trash and I...detective, you must understand, it isn’t my fault. It’s his damned wife’s.”

“Of course.”

“She’s the one who, what’s the term? ‘Set us up’? She locked us in my office and pointed a gun at us until we...well, you get what I’m getting at, don’t you?”

Pat nods. “And, let me guess, it didn’t stop there?”

Russel glances between the two officers. “No.”

“Now, while Miss Rozhdestvenskaya was in West Virginia, you and Mr. Hogan stayed in New York together, am I correct in assuming that?”

“I, uh, I suppose.”

“So you were in town on the twenty-second? And she knew about it?”

“It was her damned idea, blasted woman.”

“And what did you two get up to? Anything interesting?”

“I think you know what we ‘got up to’, detective.”

“Ah,” Pat sagely nods. “Knifeplay.”

Thompson’s pen jumps on the page, and Russel’s sputter is enough to fill an Olympic pool. 

Pat nods to Thompson to stop, and he smiles politely. 

“Thank you for working with me, Mr. Russel,” he says. “Don’t leave town, I might need to ask you some more questions.”

-

“He absolutely cut Hogan’s hog off,” Pat says, and Brian almost coughs up his slushie. 

“ _Patrick_ , please, we are in public!”

Pat raises an eyebrow and looks around his apartment. Charles on the back of the couch, the lights down low, just the two of them on the couch with no sign of Daniel for at least another three hours. Technically the rule was that Pat would take the rest of the day off after his interrogation and take a nap. Which he did for all of five minutes before waking up in a cold sweat and falling out of bed and onto his cat. Brian came over a few hours later with two slushies and a smile, and a cherry-blue-raspberry-root-beer-regular-beer slushie is better than a nap any day. 

“Besides, no. Work. At. Home,” Brian orders, poking Pat’s side with every word. Pat, of course, giggles and curls away.

“I’m just telling you- ah, fuck, Brian, no!” 

Brian follows him, continually poking at his side with purpose. Pat carefully holds his broken arm away from the back of the couch so he doesn’t smack it. Again. 

“Bad Pat,” Brian says, putting his Zuko Voice on. “No work.”

“Take mercy!” Pat cries, voice cracking, immediately regretting it as his throat burns. 

“No work.”

“Fine, no work!”

Brian sits up and nods, takes a long slurp of his slushie. “Good Pat.”

Pat huffs and sits up, leaning against the back of the couch, crosses his arms as best he can. His slushie’s long gone, and he really wants another one. Not because it’s good, because it isn’t, but because his throat’s fucking killing him. 

“We need to compare notes,” he points out, shrinking away as Brian raises a finger menacingly. “The kid-”

“The kid’s fine. We grabbed him. He’s staying with Simone.”

Pat sympathetically grimaces, immediately feeling sorry for the kid. He went to Simone’s apartment once and found a rat the size of a beach ball taking a bath in her kitchen sink. And he loves rats, but that one had fangs longer than Charlie’s legs. 

“So you can sit back and take the night off,” Brian concludes. He smiles, proud of himself, and offers out his slushie to Pat, who takes it and takes a single sip before sticking his tongue out, grimacing, and handing it back. 

“Lemon, really?”

Brian gapes. “You’ll drink vinegar, but not lemon?”

“It’s gross!”

“It is not gross! It’s tangy!”

Pat rolls his eyes. “Tangy my ass. It’s _sour_ and _disgusting_ , Brian. Honestly, I expected better out of you.”

“You’re sour and disgusting,” Brian pouts, sullenly slurping. “You have no taste.”

“I have to have some to be interested in you.”

Brian flushes and smiles around his straw. “That’s different.”

Pat turns to face him, all thoughts of work forgotten in his sudden extreme need to prove Brian wrong. And, later on when it’s late at night and Brian’s goading him into going to bed, Pat realizes that Brian hates lemon almost as much as Pat does.

-

Two interrogation sessions and several hushes arguments over Pat’s safety later, they’re no closer to figuring anything out. The most they’ve gotten is that Russel cut Hogan’s penis off for whatever reason and was the one to substitute it for Mr. Smith’s, and that information cost four hours and too much of Pat’s patience. Brian, after mentioning to Hogan that his wife is going to be sent upstate if he doesn’t confess, managed to get out of him that neither Hogan or Russel killed the Smiths and that they were only “pawns in the greater scheme”.

“Really?” Pat asks.

“Word for word, my friend.” Brian nods, turning his notebook around to show him. 

Pat sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes, rocking his chair back and forth slightly. He has a migraine coming on, he can feel it. 

“This is all bullshit,” he huffs. “Should we try the McElroys?”

“Do you think they have anything to do with this?”

“I mean, they work for her. Maybe they got important in the past couple of years.”

Brian hums, and Pat can hear the pages in his little notebook flipping back and forth. 

“Hogan said something about a hoop, if that helps?” Brian offers, and Pat stops rocking. 

“Hoops?”

Brian makes a cute little affirmative noise, and Pat feels his migraine grow ever stronger and ever closer. 

-

“July twenty-seventh, 1983. Please state your na-”

“Oh, wow, _two_ detectives!” Griffin exclaims, a wide grin crossing his face. Too wide. Griffin McElroy should never grin that wide again, it reminds Pat of a constipated alligator who got lost inside of a Sears. “What’s the special occasion?”

Pat glowers and waves his casted arm around a bit, accidentally smacking it against Brian’s shoulder. He swallows a scream, nearly doubling over. 

Brian swoops in to save the day with a smile. “Pat broke his arm, so I’m here to take notes for him. We’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t interrupt, sir.”

Griffin leans forward, resting his chin on his hands, looking between the two of them like he knows something they don’t. Or he _knows_. Pat scoots his chair a couple of inches away and clears his throat. 

“Anyway,” he coughs. Griffin’s smile only grows. “You were in town the morning of July twentieth, correct? You and your brother?”

Griffin nods. “Yeah, that’s right. Hey, Patrick, have you and the kid…” he trails off, wiggling two fingers around. 

Brian, next to Pat, stiffens, the tips of his ears turning a cherry red. Pat, on the other hand, sinks lower into his chair, his good hand shaking. 

“You, uh, what were you doing? That day?” Brian stammers out, and Pat would be facepalming if he wasn’t feeling the exact same way. 

“Me and my bro were hangin’. Just chillin’,” Griffin easily says. “I bet you two were doing the same. Ammiright?”

Pat shakes his head. “Stop that. We, uh, we have sources confirming your whereabouts that day. So stop lying to us.”

Griffin sits up and puts a hand to his cheek, eyes going wide. “Why, Patrick, I can’t believe you’d-”

“Trash told us you and Justin were killing William Smith that day,” Brian interrupts, and Griffin’s face goes slack. 

“That son of a bitch,” he softly says, sitting back in his chair, placing his hands in his lap. 

“Hands on the table,” Pat orders. 

Griffin’s hands don’t move. 

“Where’s your brother, Griffin?” Brian asks. 

“Why’d Trash tell you that?” Griffin asks. 

“Answer the question,” Pat says. 

Brian tacks on, “Please.”

Griffin shakes his head. “Justin’s busy. You won’t find him ‘til tomorrow, at least.”

“What’s he doing?” Pat asks. 

Griffin shrugs. “We’ve been busy since you locked the boss up. Hell if I know what he’s working on.”

“So you’re in charge now that she’s behind bars?” Pat asks. 

It’s strange to think about Griffin and Justin McElroy being in charge of anything after the stunt they pulled. Griffin was captain then, his desk Tara’s, his door emblazoned with a single letter ‘G’ and a smaller ‘J’ underneath. They were inseparable back then, probably still are, and Pat still remembers the day they blew open the far wall and jumped out, not looking back. It would be strange to picture them in charge of anything after that, but, then again, they were Pam’s boys. Of course she would make them important, hell, it’s probably why they left in the first place. Why bother with day-to-day mediocrity behind a desk when you could blow shit up and be some of the most important men this side of the city?

Griffin makes the universal _aren’t I special?_ motion with his head, waggling it back and forth slightly. “‘Course we are, Patrick, what do you take us for? Common men?”

“So you admit to the murders of William and Mary Anne Smith?”

“I admit to nothing until I get my lawyer in here,” Griffin obstinates, sticking his nose in the air.

“Where’s your brother?” Brian repeats, glancing up from his notebook and pausing his writing. Doodling, really. He hasn’t written a word down. Fuck. Thank God above for the new tape recorder. 

“Hopefully long gone by now,” Griffin says. “Where’s my lawyer?”

“Hell if I know,” Pat huffs, growing closer to grabbing Brian’s pen and shoving it up Griffin’s smug little nose. But that would be counterproductive. “Would you _please_ -”

Griffin gasps, smiles. “And hold on a minute, detectives, y’all didn’t read my rights before this all started. So none of this counts before a court of law, does it?”

Brian looks to Pat out of the corners of his eyes, a look on his face that Pat...hasn’t seen before. He doesn’t like it. It’s a mixture of the look Brian gives Pat when he finds his unopened bottles of pills, the look Brian gives Ronald Fagan whenever he sees him on tv, and the look Brian has whenever presented with something he doesn’t quite understand with a dash of fear and a pinch of boredom. Not something Pat ever wants to see again. 

Brian leans forward and clicks the pause button with the bottom of his pen, and he leans back and puts his pen and paper on the table. 

“Mr. McElroy, this is off the record. There are no cameras in this room. No one will know if you say anything or do anything I don’t like. You understand me?” Brian asks, voice a deadly calm that sends a shiver of...something down Pat’s spine that he should really think about when not at work in the same room as a murderer. 

Griffin blinks. “Looks like homeboy’s grown some balls to match that pornstache. Let me tell you something, kid, you deal with what I’ve gone through, and nothing scares you, least of all a wannabe Alex de Renzy with pink nail polish and his depressed boyfriend.”

Pat flinches. “de Renzy, really?”

“Who the fu-” Brian cuts himself off with a shake of the head. “Not important. What is important is that Pam Rozhdestvenskaya is in the next room over, and I’m sure she’d love to know who’s been trying to frame her.”

Griffin’s smile flickers, his gaze shifting between the two detectives like he’s watching a shitty tennis match. “Are you threatening me?”

Brian brightly smiles. “‘Course not! That’s illegal, right Pat?”

Pat doesn’t know if it’s illegal. 

“Sure is, Brian.”

“Besides,” Brian continues, picking at his polish like he does every time he starts feeling an attack coming on. Pat fights the urge to pull him into a protective hug and also maybe shoot Griffin for causing it in the first place. God, he’s tired. “You’re one of the most powerful men in the city, aren’t you? You’d have someone in my apartment with a tommy gun by the time I finished even thinking about threatening you.”

“And that would be murder,” Pat says. “Or conspiracy to murder. Or assaulting a police officer, which I am all too familiar with the consequences of.”

Griffin shifts in his seat. “Well, boys, what are you trying to do here?”

“Well, I don’t know about Detective Gill, but I’m trying to cut you a deal,” Brian says. He’s moved on from his middle finger to his thumb, still picking, eyes still locked on Griffin’s paling face. “You tell us what we need, and I don’t set your boss free and tell her that you and your brother tried sending her to prison.”

“I mean, we didn’t. Really. It was just-”

“Ah-ah,” Brian tisks, clicking the ‘play’ button. “Continue.”

Griffin opens his mouth, closes it, crosses his arms, looks at Pat, looks at the door as if expecting someone to burst through it, and sighs. 

“Just read me the fuckin’ rights,” he says. 

Brian nods to Pat, who clears his throat. 

“You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Do you understand?”

-

_“Explain this to me again. The brothers wanted to take charge of the crime ring. So they framed her?”_

_“That’s right, ma’am.”_

_“Cut the shit, Pat, it’s just us.”_

_“Whatever.”_

_“Get that look off your- nevermind. So what was up with the dick?”_

_“Well, apparently Hogan and Russel got a bit upset with the plan and wanted out. Instead, Justin forced Russel to cut Hogan’s dick off and stick it onto Mr. Smith’s crotch.”_

_“That’s fucking weird.”_

_“Tell me about it.”_

-

 _“No more dicks,”_ is Brian’s first new rule of conversation. No rotting dicks, no missing dicks, no broken, bitten, ravaged dicks. No dicks. 

The second rule is that Pat isn’t allowed to lie about his lack of therapy anymore, the third is that Brian must be complimented at least once an hour. 

“I don’t need a rule to do that,” Pat says, and Brian adoringly sighs and snuggles up against his good side, his head settling on Pat’s chest and his eyes slipping closed. Pat’s hand finds its way to Brian’s now-messy mop of curls. He knows Brian’s going to get a haircut soon, but, God, if Pat doesn’t want him to keep it. He likes having something to hold onto, something to remind him that this is real. Brian is real, and Pat really did take the plunge. 

Brian’s roommates are out of town, somewhere down in Jersey, maybe, and Daniel’s at his partner’s for the night. Daniel had, in fact, left with a couple of the “communal condoms” they keep under the bathroom sink and a knowing smirk thrown towards Brian and Pat on the couch as they watched the news. This all led to the obvious solution to the age-old problem of _“I’m too tall to sleep on the couch, Pat, and my place is super scary at night without Laura to protect me, whatever shall I do?”_.

“Rule four,” Brian continues. “thou shalt not lie about thy comfort zones.”

Pat’s fingers stop. “What’s that supposed to-”

“I fully expect a list by the end of the night, Patrick. I’ve given you long enough.”

“I told you, I don’t have a list. I don’t need one.”

“Bullshit, Pat, you really think I’m that stupid?”

“You’re a genius,” Pat acquiesces, because it’s true. “But I can’t do it tomorrow?”

“No,” Brian firmly states. “Tonight. Because I...fuck, Pat, I just want to kiss you, you know? I need to know where it’s okay.”

Pat feels something well up in his heart, his eyes, and he wills whatever it is away, because he doesn’t need it right now. Doesn’t need it ever. 

“Wherever you think is okay is okay,” he says. He kisses the tip of Brian’s nose. “Like that’s okay for me.” Kisses Brian’s forehead. “And there.” Left cheek. “And there.”

“And, let me guess, anywhere but the mouth?”

Pat stiffens. “I mean, if you-”

Brian huffs and pulls himself away, sits himself up in bed, reaches over Pat’s body and flicks on the bedside lamp, sending shadows skittering across the room. Charlie, who was at the foot of the bed content with the dark, stretches in protest and glares at Brian out of one eye. 

He glares at Pat as lovingly as a glare can get. 

“You’re an idiot,” he says. “how many fucking times do I have to tell you that you’re part of this relationship, too? That you have boundaries just like I do?”

Pat can’t touch the back of Brian’s neck, won’t. Can’t kiss his right cheek, won’t. Can’t pull on his hair too hard, won’t. 

“Well,” Pat says, pulling himself into a sitting position and wincing as he pushes against his broken arm. It’s almost healed, it being a few weeks since it was broken, but it still hurts like a bitch and he knows he’s never going to lose this pain, just like how he’s never going to lose the pain his knees give him every time he tries doing anything remotely athletic anymore. “I know I’m in this relationship. What more do you want from me?”

Brian desperately looks at him, and Pat has to look away, because _fuck_. 

“I want to know that I’m not hurting you,” Brian says, and Pat’s eyes spring a leak. 

“You aren’t,” he says, wiping his eyes before Brian has a chance to see. “you’re fucking amazing, Brian.”

“Then why do you have a panic attack every time I try and kiss you on the lips?”

Pat sniffs, shaking his head. In the near-dark, his closet casts a shadow that vaguely resembles a tall man holding a glass of whiskey, the moonlight shining a bright crescent in the shape of his crooked-ass smile. He blinks, and it’s gone, and he should’ve taken his meds. 

“I don’t,” he says, flinching as Brian opens his mouth to retort and quickly correcting himself. “I do. But I’m working on it. My, uh, my last therapist said the best way to confront a fear was to face it head-on.”

“You’re scared?” Brian asks. 

Pat shakes his head, smiling slightly. If only that was just it. “I...I told you about Jim, right? I’m just working through all that. I’ll be good as new soon.”

Brian lets out a quiet breath. “Fuck, Patrick. You...I want you to tell me every place. Right now. Your therapist was a dumbass.”

“He’s been right so far,” Pat shrugs. It’s another lie, all that therapist said was to check himself into an institution for getting fucked by a dude and falling in love. 

Brian scoots closer, pulling the comforter off of the two of them and looking Pat over completely. Pat gingerly crosses his arms, raises an eyebrow. Brian gives him a _speak and I’ll cut your tongue out_ look that Pat does not want to test. Charlie protests the sudden blanket and hops off the bed, shuffling around in the dark.

“Show me,” Brian says. 

Pat rolls his eyes and grabs the blankets, tugs them back over his legs. “You’re being ridiculous.”

Brian yanks the covers away, pushing them off the bed completely. He crosses his arms, his mustache twitching.

“You’re the one giving yourself panic attacks because you’re scared of me.”

Pat’s eyes go wide. “I’m- no! I’m not _afraid_ of you! I just…” _“...don’t want to lose you.”_

Brian softens, drooping a little and leaning back against the wall. “Talk to me, Patrick. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Pat sniffs, raising a hand to wipe his eyes again and pulling his knees to his chest. Tight, that’s safe. Small. “I’m just. Afraid, I guess? Because you’re...you. And I can’t even love you like you want me to.”

‘Love’ is a tricky word for Patrick Gill. He feels it every time he looks at anything he even remotely likes. He loves Charlie. He loves pizza. He loves his roommate. He loves Brian David Gilbert in a way he hasn’t felt in a decade, and it’s both the worst and best feeling in the world, to be in love with someone who actually loves him back. He gets the amount of love he needs, but he can’t love Brian back with the same amount of force. He wants to, God, he wants to, but he can’t kiss him without feeling _his_ lips pressed against his in a dark taxi after an hour of drinking things he probably shouldn’t have on the way to God-knows-where after the best night of Pat’s entire fucking life, he can’t let him touch his neck without feeling _him_ sucking the life out of it and him, cold, numb skin meeting _his_ warm, wandering mouth. He can’t go any further than cuddling without getting forced back ten years, six years, two months. And he wants to, but. But.

“Oh, honey, is that all?” Brian softly asks, shaking his head. He’s smiling, and Pat feels betrayed simply because he’s crying on one side of the bed and Brian’s smiling like nothing’s wrong. Brian pulls Pat into a loose hug, allowing him room to leave if he wants, but there’s never a time when Pat doesn’t want Brian’s arms around him. 

It takes a moment for Pat to realize he’s shaking, and another to realize that he’s soaking Brian’s tank top with tears he most definitely did not authorize. Brian lightly squeezes him, peppering kisses into his hair, and this isn’t fair. He doesn’t know quite how, but Pat knows this isn’t fair. 

“You’re perfect,” Brian murmurs, voice feather-soft and beautiful. “Beautiful. Stupid.”

“God, I’m an idiot.”

“You sure are, baby. You don’t need to ‘get on my level’ or whatever you think you’re doing. I like you for you, not what you do with me. I don’t need kisses. I just need you.”

Pat takes in a shuddery breath and pulls away from the embrace, re-settles himself so that he doesn’t have to look Brian in the face while still being able to reach the tissue box on the nightstand.

He swallows and tries to speak a few times, gives up a few times as all that comes out are light sobs that pull Brian closer and closer to his side with every breath. 

But he eventually gets it out, putting his own hand to his lips. “Mouth. Arou- around is fine. Just not...on.”

Brian studiously nods. He’s pressed back up against Pat’s side by now, and he drops his head onto Pat’s shoulder. 

“That it?” he asks.

“Neck. No biting, please.”

Brian raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like a biter?”

“Yes.”

“How dare you insinuate that, Pat Gill. I’m hurt.”

Pat lets out a wet laugh. “You’re the horniest motherfucker on the planet, babe.”

“Have you met my friend, Patrick Gill? All he’s been talking about for the past week is dicks.”

Pat nudges Brian’s head up long enough for him to reposition his arm so that it’s slung around Brian, his hand resting on Brian’s hip and rubbing small circles into it with his thumb. It’s quiet. Good, quiet. 

“I’m never going to have sex again,” he says, and Brian lets out a barely-audible noise that rings with disappointment. “I, uh, sorry.”

“No,” Brian says. “it’s fine. I can live with just an ample amount of cuddling. I’ve gone twenty-four years of my life without fucking you, I can go for the rest of it.”

Pat turns his head to face him, hoping most of his tears have dried up by now. They haven’t.

“Really?”

Brian nods, the hair on the top of his head tickling Pat’s nose. “Sex isn’t everything in a relationship, Pat. Besides, I can get everything I need from Jonah.” Pat’s hand tightens, and Brian laughs. “Come on, Pat, really? ‘Course I’m not going to fuck him. He’s gross and his dick looks like a soggy, rotten Cheeto.”

Pat lightly smiles and taps Brian on the nose. “Rule one.”

“Oh no,” Brian says, sounding not at all worried. “whatever shall become of me?”

Pat has half a mind to roll on top of him and pin him to the bed with his body weight, because Brian has a thing about always wanting to be on top. So he can look at Pat’s face easier, he claims. And then they would smile and laugh at and with each other and they would try and kiss and Pat would panic and either lick him or run to the other side of the room and complain about his own face again. And Pat is not in the mood for that, not now at, what, midnight with an irritated Charlie meowing at them to hurry up and a tired Pat who wants to get to sleep already. 

So he settles for a simple poke in the side and a faux-angry look. 

“That all?” Brian asks, pouting. Pat has the sudden urge to kiss that pout of his face, and so he does, kissing the little space between the top lip and the nose. Right on the ‘stache, which he has accepted as just part of Brian. No point in being disgusted by something his love loves so much. It’s awkward, and Pat’s lips definitely graze against Brian’s for a moment and a brief flash of fear hits him, but it’s over quickly.

Sure enough, it works, and Brian’s smile is brighter than the lamp. 

“Patrick,” he purrs, voice low. “you aren’t supposed to reward me.”

It takes a moment for his words to come to him, but Pat eventually manages, “I’m tired.”

“You’re old. No fun.”

“I’m fun!” Pat protests. “Just tired.”

Brian rolls his eyes and slumps down in bed until he’s lying down. Pat sighs in relief, yawns, and follows him, rolling onto his side and slinging a leg over Brian’s two, using his arm to pull him closer. Brian huffs out a laugh and adjusts himself so that he isn’t quite being pinned. 

“Rule five,” Brian grunts, pulling his arm out from under Pat’s body so that he can tuck it somewhere where it won’t fall asleep. “Thou shalt not strangle thy boyfriend in his sleep.”

Pat moves his hand up to cover Brian’s mouth with a light shush. He can almost feel Brian’s eye roll, but he quiets. Charlie is almost immediately back up on the bed and curling up somewhere where he won’t get kicked in the middle of the night. 

In this moment, he wants to say it. Because the love in the air between the two of them is palpable, and it smells like a mixture of strawberry and vinegar, which really shouldn’t work together but it _does_ and it’s beautiful. They shouldn’t work, but they do, and, while Pat has never believed in love at first sight lasting, this feels like it will. It’ll never end if he has anything to say about it, and maybe that’s selfish. But he’s a greedy bastard, and Brian is the most beautiful treasure of them all.

Brian falls asleep first, as usual, after only a few moments of adjusting himself and Pat, his face settling down into that of a statue. In this moment where it’s just Pat alone in the world, he whispers a quiet _“I love you”_ into Brian’s hair and lets sleep claim him for the first time in two months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He is in love.
> 
> Next time on NYBD!


	9. Interlude: June, 1997

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian’s sweater is, in fact, very light and is, in fact, striped with the colors of the rainbow. It matches the flag painted onto his cheek and the ribbon tied around Pat’s wrist. And, while he knows Pat isn’t as comfortable with his sexuality as he is, Brian’s pretty sure that wearing a black flannel to Pride signifies him as a straight, which is the most heinous crime of them all.
> 
> Pat raises a hand to grab Brian’s, pulling it down onto his lap, their fingers intertwined. The promise ring sitting neatly on his ring finger is cold against Brian’s skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the last commercial break for this fic! This is a bit of a weird one, and, again, is not edited. 
> 
> This fic has been a lot recently. And this and the final chapter...won't. All fluff, babey. 
> 
> The final chapter may not be up this week. It depends on if my lovely editor plans to kill me for writing it. Which they might. Which would be a new experience I would love to try. Anyway, it'll be up soon.

Pat looks good in leather. Too good. It’s criminal. Everything about Pat Gill is criminal these days, from the leather jacket to the heavy flannels to the streaks of grey in his hair to the slight lines around his eyes. To the way he looks with his hair tied back as he works in the bathroom trying to get the toilet to stop flooding every time either of them even thinks about turning on the shower. To the way he holds Brian at night in bed, close to his chest like he’s never going to let go. 

But, really, it’s fucking June. Pat’s going to die of heatstroke within five minutes of the parade. 

“I’ll be fine,” Pat assures him as they get ready to leave. Or, rather, as Pat stands by the door with an amused smile, arms crossed and hip cocked ever so slightly, watching Brian’s desperate attempts to get him to shed at least one layer. Or two. Because there Pat is in full-length jeans, his oldest black flannel, and his stupidly-sexy leather jacket. His hair is tied back, at least, and he has sunglasses, at least, but _still_. He is going to literally die.

“You are going to melt,” Brian says, urges. He waves his hands around a bit and throws them into the air as Pat rolls his eyes. “You have no sense of self-preservation!”

Pat snorts, tosses some hair out of his face. “You’re just now figuring that out?” 

No, Brian figured that out after a case in ‘87 that left Pat with five broken ribs and Brian with a sprained ankle that still won’t cooperate on rainy days. And in ‘84 when Pat jumped off a moving boat onto another moving boat to try and catch a rampant boat thief. And in ‘90 when he willingly drank some of Jeff’s shitty coffee. He’s an idiot. A dumbass. A hero, really, and someone who Brian used to dream of having in his life. 

Brian grumbles and adjusts his sunglasses, frowning. “Come on, Pat. It’s one day.”

“And I have a reputation to uphold, Brian. It’s not like you ever shaved that mustache for literally anything.”

Brian bristles. “That mustache was a national treasure.”

“And my jacket isn’t?” Pat asks, raising an eyebrow. Bastard knows what he’s doing. And he’s lived with Brian long enough to know that Brian knows what he’s doing. 

Brian huffs, “It is. But it’s also June, _Patrick_ , you’re going to die out there!”

“I’ll be fine,” Pat repeats. His smile shifts into something a bit more playful, and Brian immediately readies himself. They’ve played this game too much, and they’re both getting too old for it. “I’ll take it off if you can get it o-”

He breaks off into a squawk as Brian lunges at him, grabbing either side of the open jacket and pulling down. Pat grabs Brian’s waist and lifts him with a light grunt, throwing him over his shoulder as easily as a forty-five-year-old man with back problems can. Brian wheezes as Pat’s too-boney shoulder digs into his gut. 

“That it?” Pat asks, out of breath. 

Brian responds by grabbing the jacket’s collar and yanking it back. Pat’s grip on Brian’s legs loosen, and Brian rolls off his boyfriend and onto the floor, wheezing as the air is knocked out of him yet again. Something in his neck pops, and he’s reminded that he really isn’t as young as he used to be. ‘Old man bones,’ Pat had used to say (still says, but now he has actual old man bones), and Brian had only scoffed and kissed him. But, _boy_ , sometimes he feels it.

Pat’s immediately on his knees by Brian’s side, chuckling like the bastard he is. 

“You ‘kay?” he asks, and Brian responds by grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him down into a kiss, careful (he knows that Pat's fine, now. He's okay with it, now. Still doesn't hurt to be careful). Pat smiles into the it, closing his eyes, and it takes a moment for him to process Brian letting go of his shirt, grabbing the lapels of his jacket, and wrestling it down past his elbows and to his wrists within seconds. He squeaks in protest and Brian gives his cheek a light kiss before pulling the jacket completely off and tossing it behind them and onto the recliner. 

Pat gapes down at him, and Brian winks and sits up, wincing as something else pops. 

“We’re too old for this,” he winces, rubbing the back of his neck. 

The corner of Pat’s mouth quirks up into an open-mouthed smile. “Old man bones gettin’ ya?”

Brian nods and leans against the side of the recliner, and Pat crawls over to join him, pressing a light kiss to the side of Brian’s neck right where it meets the collar bone. 

“What would I have to do to convince you to put on a t-shirt?” Brian asks, breaking into a laugh as Pat playfully huffs and pushes him over. 

“You’re wearing a goddamn sweater, sweetie,” Pat says. “No way I’m taking this flannel off.”

Brian’s sweater is, in fact, very light and is, in fact, striped with the colors of the rainbow. It matches the flag painted onto his cheek and the ribbon tied around Pat’s wrist. And, while he knows Pat isn’t as comfortable with his sexuality as he is, Brian’s pretty sure that wearing a black flannel to Pride signifies him as a straight, which is the most heinous crime of them all. 

Brian sits back up and pulls lightly on Pat’s sleeve up by his shoulder. “Not even if I ask nicely?”

Pat raises a hand to grab Brian’s, pulling it down onto his lap, their fingers intertwined. The promise ring sitting neatly on his ring finger is cold against Brian’s skin. 

“Darling,” Pat says, looking Brian in the eyes, his own eyes crinkling at the edges. “you could sing me an entire fucking opera, and I would keep this shirt on.”

“Ah.” Brian nods. “Two operas, it is.”

Pat rolls his eyes and rubs his thumb against the back of Brian’s hand. “No operas. I let you keep the jorts, you let me keep the flannel.”

Brian pouts, smooths a wrinkle out of his very fashionable jean shorts. “These are iconic, darling. You’d dare take them away from me?”

“Yes,” Pat deadpans. “Immediately.”

Brian huffs out of his nose and slumps, his sweater riding up his back. “I don’t know why I love you.”

“Because I’m irresistible,” Pat says, smirking down at him. “And I’m cool.”

“You are the opposite of cool.”

“Says the man in a rainbow sweater.”

“It’s pride, baby! What was I supposed to do, not wear it?”

“Yes!” Pat replies, grinning wildly. He ducks down and kisses Brian’s forehead in as much of an apology as Pat Gill is capable of giving.

Brian can already hear the parade starting a couple of blocks away, so he pushes himself to his feet, pulling Pat up with him.

“Come on,” he says. “We’re going to be late.”

“I don’t think you can be late for a parade,” Pat says, letting go of Brian’s hand long enough to unbutton his flannel, seemingly giving up, but, no, Brian could never get that lucky. 

Underneath is a tye-dyed monstrosity that Brian’s pretty sure he’s seen in his nightmares, a wild cacophony of a rainbow that Brian both needs to see fully and needs to burn immediately. 

“My love,” Brian slowly says, completely focused on the nightmare unfolding in front of him. “What the fuck is that?”

Pat glances up at him, innocent-faced, which is complete bullshit. “What, this? I thought you wanted a t-shirt, babe.”

He finishes unbuttoning the flannel and, right in the middle of the shirt, is a technicolor cat wearing sunglasses. 

“You’re a bastard,” Brian says, feeling a traitorously-fond smile grow on his face. No, face, stop smiling at the incredibly-illegal shirt. “A monster.”

Pat shoves his hands into his pockets and raises an eyebrow. “Pot, kettle.”

Brian grumbles and pulls his Chucks on, blowing his hair out of his eyes. Pat, of course, already has his boots on. Has this whole time. Has been ready since about an hour ago when this whole argument began. Pat pulls his sunglasses out of his hair and slides them on. And, as he and Brian leave, still arguing about Pat’s shitty fashion sense and Brian’s extremely amazing fashion sense, they take each other’s hands and hold tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> He's in love. 
> 
> Next time on NYBD!


	10. All You Need is Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third time that Pat ever said “I love you” was to a sleeping man, and he wishes he could do it over and tell him minutes beforehand. Hours. Days, even. He would’ve said it after walking Brian home after their first date. In the jail cell the following night. Every moment since. Because Pat, when he falls, falls hard. And he’s pretty sure he’s never going to recover from this one, not that he would ever want to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here it is, the final chapter. 
> 
> This one was originally going to be long and epic, including an interpretive dance number as well as me bungee jumping off a bridge and screaming out that uhhhh patbri gay. But then I realized, shit, this is fucking long on its own. And these boys needed fluff. 
> 
> More sentimental shit at the end of the fic.

He almost says it again at lunch a few days later. And again as they walked back to the station half an hour after that. And again that night as Brian brought him out to his boat and pulled out a bottle of wine and wiggled his eyebrows. And again the next morning as Pat woke up with a stiff back on the deck of a ship in his partner’s arms. And again, and again, and again. It’s a problem. He should take care of it and just get it over with. 

“I like you,” he whispers, pressing a gentle, subtle kiss to the side of Brian’s head, hoping the message gets across. 

“You’d better,” Brian snorts, shifting closer and dropping his head against Pat’s arm as discreetly as he can in a crowded movie theater. “Now hush, I think Chevy’s gonna wreck the car.”

Pat sighs and focuses his attention back on the screen, smiles as Griswold gets distracted by that blonde again. It’s a stupid movie, definitely not something Pat would’ve gone to see on his own. But Brian had asked, and Pat was too awestruck by his very existence to say no.

A couple of rows down, a teenage couple starts making out, and Pat winces and drops his hand from the seat’s arm to Brian’s leg, gently squeezing. Brian immediately pulls his hand out of their shared popcorn bucket and squeezes Pat’s hand back, flashing a smile at him. 

“You’re perfect,” Pat mouths, hoping the message gets across. 

Brian rolls his eyes and puts his finger to his lips, flicking his head towards the screen. Pat sighs and dejectedly takes a handful of popcorn and starts working his way through it. 

As they walk back to the subway after the movie, Brian chattering about how amazing the film was and about how sexy that red Ferrari was, Pat stays silent, keeps his hands in his pockets. It’s a tradition for them, Brian talking about the movie and Pat contentedly listening (except when they went to see _Star Wars_ a couple months ago. Then Pat was too busy talking for Brian to even think about interjecting with his own thoughts). 

“I’m lucky,” Pat says as soon as there’s a hint of a lull in the rant, hoping the message gets across. 

“I know, right?” Brian agrees, vividly nodding and grinning. He bounces a bit as they walk, and it’s the most adorable thing Pat’s seen since the last time his partner did anything remotely adorable. “Opening night! We’re going to see it again, right? Oh! I can bring Laura and Jo!”

And Brian starts on about how Jonah once tried stealing a box of Crackerjack from behind the snack counter and ended up losing a hand, or something. Pat wishes he could pay attention, but between the sudden feeling of meeting-the-family-dread blooming in his stomach and the indescribably-painful _need_ to tell Brian that he loves him, he’s occupied. 

-

The first time that Pat ever said “I love you” was at a concert in 1969 when he was high on life and LSD. He grabbed the closest guy, kissed him, and told him that he was the love of Pat’s life. The guy kissed him back and let him into his stash of shrooms. And it truly was love for all three days, then they sobered up enough to start home. The guy lived out in Utah. Pat stayed with him until they got to New York City, and then they split a pizza, had one last quickie in the airport bathroom, and separated. 

The second time that Pat ever said “I love you” was to Jim Horace the night before turning him in. And he didn’t mean it, of course he didn’t mean it. He hadn’t felt love towards that man in years by that point. And the gun took it just that one step closer to the edge. So he took Jim to bed, told him that he loved him over and over as he kissed him and blew him and went through their whole routine. Eat, fuck, sleep. And, the next morning as Pat walked into the station, he went right to Griffin’s office and spilled. 

The third time that Pat ever said “I love you” was to a sleeping man, and he wishes he could do it over and tell him minutes beforehand. Hours. Days, even. He would’ve said it after walking Brian home after their first date. In the jail cell the following night. Every moment since. Because Pat, when he falls, falls hard. And he’s pretty sure he’s never going to recover from this one, not that he would ever want to. 

-

Dr. Frank is surprised to see him. Which, admittedly, he should expect. It’s been four months since the last time he made it to an appointment, even with Brian walking him across town to the building and giving him an encouraging smile and heading off to gossip with Simone and Jenna across the street at the morgue. Pat’s been waiting just inside the lobby long enough for Brian to be gone before hiding out at the park a couple of blocks away for an hour before going back, grabbing Brian, and going to lunch. It’s foolproof, if not one of the worst things Pat’s done in his entire life.

“Detective,” she says, tilting her chin up. 

Pat ducks his head. “Doctor.”

“Took you long enough,” she says. The clock on her desk ticks at him menacingly. “What’s so special about today?”

“It’s...complicated,” he winces. “I, uh...I’m out of pills. First.”

“Xanax?” she asks, as if that isn’t the only kind she’s given him since finding out he’s been avoiding them. But he takes these ones if only because he wants to stop panicking every time he thinks about boats or kissing Brian or maybe going back to the gym or his parents somehow finding out and kidnapping him and dragging him back to Maine or-

He jerks his head in a nod, grabbing a throw pillow from the other side of the couch and holding it tight to his chest, arms crossed across it. 

“How long have you been out?”

“Uh, two months?” he says, flinching as she huffs out a sigh and writes a note down. 

“You’re a dumbass,” she says. Straight to the point; he’s only been here maybe five times, but she knows how to shut his dumb ass down before he gets too bad.

“I know. I’ve been told.”

She hums. “By who? Roommate giving you trouble again?”

“Uh, partner. She tells me.”

Dr. Frank quirks an eyebrow. “You talking about Detective Gilbert? ‘Cause Tara told me-”

Pat flinches again and sinks back into the couch, staring firmly at the weird horse painting hanging above her desk across the room. 

She sighs, “Look, Patrick, you think I don’t see him drop you off every Thursday?”

He nods, squeezes the pillow tighter, trying to do what she told him in their second appointment: channel the bullshit into the pillow. Choke its life out. Pretend it’s _him_ , or someone else. Or a fucking crocodile. Today it’s himself for being so obvious. 

“He’s cute. You did good.”

He nods. 

“Nice butt. Cute face. Terrible facial hair, though.”

He scowls. “It’s charming.”

She nods. “Of course, of course. He know that you haven’t been coming up here?”

Pat shakes his head. “I was doing fine.”

“Obviously not considering you ran out of pills two months ago and didn’t come up here for more.”

“I...I was doing fine. Better. And I was going through some things.”

“Like getting on the most fearsome mob leader’s bad side?”

He glances at her, confused. “How did you-”

She shrugs. “Tara told me.”

“Tara can keep her face out of my business.”

Dr. Frank tutts and just like that, Pat sinks further into the couch, face reddening. Because she’s a monster. Because she knows better than to try and keep Tara from getting into his shit. 

“Can I just get more pills?” he snaps. He shifts his glance out the window, scowl lifting as he watches a vaguely-Jenna-shaped figure drag a vaguely-Brian-figure out the front doors of the morgue and down the street to that Mexican place Brian’s been too scared to go to. Stomach’s too fragile, he said, as if he can’t eat five dishes of curry in one sitting. 

Dr. Frank leans over in her chair to get a look, too, and she barks out a laugh. “You’re gone on him, ain’t you?”

Pat sighs and pulls the pillow closer to his face, maybe hoping that it’ll somehow end up smothering him. He knows Tara knows, now, _somehow_. And now his therapist knows. And his therapist’s favorite way of making him deal with things is forcing him to confront them through unending questions and vague threats of physical harm. She and Simone would be good friends. 

“He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” he quietly says, snapping his attention back to the horse painting. “That’s not, like, an illness anymore. Right?”

“Not in here, Patrick. Now, come on, I know you came up here for something besides your pills.”

“I didn’t.”

He did. He wanted to make sure he isn’t insane for wanting anything he has. And to let her know that he will not be needing her services anymore, thank you very much, he’s over it. 

“Right. Lemme guess, you needed to make sure I’m not going to send you to Bellevue?”

He flinches, and she sighs and passes him a box of tissues off of her desk; he takes it with one hand and sets it next to him on the couch. He won’t need them. 

“Patrick, I’m gonna say this once, so you’d better listen.” She waits until he nods to continue. “You and your boyfriend are fucking adorable. That is no crime, and it is not in my little book of illnesses to watch out for. You’re good on that front. Your other stuff? Yeah, you keep ignoring your appointments and skipping your doses, I might have to send you to Bellevue for a couple of weeks.”

“I keep fucking telling you, I don-”

She cuts him off with a clap, and he sinks further into the couch, hoping it’ll swallow him. 

“Bullshit, Pat, I see those circles under your eyes. How much sleep you been getting?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Some. I sleep better with Brian, honestly.”

“And you’d sleep even better if you would take your goddamn medicine. And I’m not even gonna get into the anxiety.”

Pat gulps down a lump of the aforementioned anxiety, and tears threaten to bubble up and spill out all over Dr. Frank’s too-fancy leopard-print rug. He somehow manages to squeeze the pillow tighter. 

“I-” he coughs a few times, sniffs. “Fuck you. You- you’re a fucking monster, doctor.”

She shrugs, unmoved. “Gotta be, with you.”

He wants to flip her off, but he also does want those pills. They did help, however little help anything could be to someone who’s _fine_. 

“The first night I didn’t have the dreams,” he slowly says, hoping she’ll get a fucking clue. “was the first night Bri and I shared a bed. And that means something, right?”

She hesitantly shakes her head. “Probably a coincidence, Pat. Sorry. Maybe he does help a bit. Like a teddy bear. But the bear can only get you so far.”

“He’s better than a teddy bear,” he distantly says. “He’s...I love him. He’s been what’s been getting me through the past couple months.”

“He isn’t your therapist, Pat,” she gently says, words prodding his side just a touch too hard. He winces. “He’s just your boyfriend. And maybe he does help. Maybe he helps a lot. But he is just one guy. Like, what if you have an attack in your sleep again? You think he’d appreciate a black eye? And what if he’s on vacation without you. Or you’re in different hotel rooms. You gonna deal with the dreams then?”

He bites his lip. Shakes his head slowly. 

Dr. Frank nods. “I know you think you’re a big, strong, manly-man, detective. But even guys need some help sometimes, okay? And I don’t give a shit what your last therapist said, I’ll kick his ass if it’ll get you coming more often.”

He snorts despite himself and grabs a tissue, holds it just under his nose. “I hate you.”

She rolls her eyes. “Most of my patients do. Now tell me about Brian. We still have forty minutes to kill.”

He knows she’s distracting him. She’s pulled it before, asking about Charles or that new arcade by the pier he mentioned checking out with a coworker he carefully did not name. But he sighs anyway and finds himself smiling as he describes Brian’s strange aversion to everything monochrome (except for Pat himself, which he notes. Because he can, because it makes Dr. Frank snort and shake her head, telling him that he’s just as colorful as Brian. Because it kills time.)

By the time the hour’s up, Pat’s put the pillow back in its place, and his leg’s bouncing. He lets out a relieved sigh as he checks the clock, and Dr. Frank rolls her eyes. 

She stands and stretches out her arms behind her back, bones not making the same popping noises Pat’s make when he stands and mirrors her movements. 

“Well, detective,” she says. “Was nice talking to you. We’ll call when your pills are ready.”

He ducks his head again. “Thanks. I, uh. I should get started on the other ones.”

“Do that, show up here next week and the week after, and think about the group sessions,” she confirms. He instantly knows that he will be doing two of those things, both under threat of breaking, entering, and castration if he doesn’t. 

“Of course,” he says. 

“And make sure you talk to him about the nightmares,” she adds, and he sighs and readies a protest. But he wisely keeps his mouth shut, just nodding, giving an awkward wave, and heading out the door and downstairs before she can tell him to do more things he won’t do. 

-

As Brian and Pat make it through Pat’s front door, laughing and practically hanging off of each other, drunk off their asses on the cheap booze from the cheap bar they went to to celebrate another case done and another therapy session over (the third one in a row Pat’s actually gone to; it’s a record, not that Brian needs to know that), Charlie screeches and flings himself at the two of them. Pat somehow manages to catch his cat while also not dropping his very shaken, very handsome-and-beautiful-and-perfect boyfriend-partner. 

He holds his cat by the armpits and frowns at him. “Bad Charlie.”

Charlie meows innocently and dangles, wiggling his tail around. Brian coos and stumbles away from under Pat’s arm. He sloppily presses a quick kiss to Pat’s cheek and moves in to give Charles some scratches, beams as Charlie bumps his nose against Brian’s. 

“He loves me!” Brian cheers. 

Pat smiles. “Not the only one.”

Because _that_ has to get it across. 

“Yeah,” Brian dreamily says. He scoops Charlie out of Pat’s arms and cradles him close to his chest, pressing a happy kiss between his ears. “You do love your daddy, don’t you? Don’t you?”

Charlie’s eyes narrow contentedly and he purrs, and Pat pouts and closes the door, leans against it, and tries to come up with something smooth that screams _‘I fucking love you, dumbass’_. 

“You’re his dad, too,” he says, hoping the message gets across. 

Brian’s eyes light up. “Really?”

Pat nods, smiles softly. “Yeah. ‘Course, Bri.”

“God, you’re sweet.” Brian tips forward and kisses Pat’s chin, right on the grey spot on the beard he really should shave in the morning. He then almost falls over, only avoiding the floor by catching himself in Pat’s arms, drops Charles, who skitters away to Pat’s room with a grunt, and gives a lopsided grin and a thumbs-up. 

Pat snorts. “You good?”

“Perfect,” Brian breathes, looking up at Pat’s face like he’s seeing something special and beautiful for the first time. “You been working out again?”

“Boxing.”

Brian sagely nods. “I should do that. Can’t have you being the hero all the time, you know.”

The image of Brian taking his shirt off after a long workout session between just the two of them, his muscular torso glistening with sweat, him whipping his curls out of his face and taking a long moment just to breathe in a sudden ray of sunlight, enters Pat’s tired, drunken mind. Imaginary Brian looks at Pat and smiles tiredly, fondly, and he walks closer, and Real Pat has to squash that sequence into a box and shove it into the back of his mind along with all the other Brian Boxes that he’s made in the past two years. That’s for later. For when Pat doesn’t feel like he’s going to pass out from just the simple sight of Brian’s beautiful eyes, or from the astounding number of cheap beers he managed to drink. 

“Bed?” Pat offers, voice cracking. He gently pushes Brian back to his feet. 

Brian pouts and dejectedly works on taking his shoes off, his left shoe giving him a bit of trouble. Pat pulls his boots off and, after a moment of amusedly watching Brian almost fall over trying to untie his right shoe, gets down to help him. 

Brian gasps, “Oh my, you are so smart. How did you manage that?”

Pat lifts Brian’s leg long enough to pull the shoe off and chuck it into the apartment and smiles. “My long, dextrous fingers.”

Maybe, while they were out, Brian decided to celebrate by trying every cocktail the bar had in addition to the two shots of whiskey, though that quickly settled down into him sitting through Long Island after Long Island. And maybe Pat should’ve stopped him, should’ve played the responsible boyfriend-partner-friend and taken him home after his third Long Island when he tried to get Pat to ditch the bar and go roller skating. But he was five whiskeys deep by then and very, very tired from therapy (Dr. Frank brought a water gun today and sprayed him every time he brought up not needing to go next week), and Brian was in no shape to move, slumped against his side in the back booth where no one could see if they were too close for two platonic male friends to be. 

Brian solemnly nods and grabs Pat’s hand, bends down far enough to kiss every one of his fingers while not completely toppling over. 

“Pretty little fingers,” he smirks, and Pat flushes.

“Don’t remind me,” he says. 

Brian cheekily grins and yanks Pat to his feet. “You’re the one who said it.”

“And it is the worst thing I’ve ever said, I know.”

“I thought it was charming.” Brian shrugs. He kisses the spot on Pat’s beard again and makes grabby hands, smiling widely at Pat’s smirk. “Take me to bed, sweetie, daddy’s tired.”

Pat rolls his eyes and picks his partner-boyfriend up with a grunt, steadying himself as Brian wraps himself around him koala-style, wrapping his legs around Pat’s hips, nuzzling his face into the side of Pat’s neck, glasses and all. _‘Daddy,’_ his ass.

“You sure you don’t want to change first, father?” he asks, carefully walking them to his bedroom. He does not want to risk waking Daniel up, not this late at night. He does not want to wake up with hot sauce in his shampoo again. And God knows he and Brian weren’t quiet coming in. He only has so much of a death wish. 

“Into what?” Brian mumbles. 

“Out of that,” Pat answers. He nudges the door open with his foot and nudges the awaiting Charlie away, too. “Not like I haven’t seen you before.”

Brian hums. “My decency, Patrick.”

Pat turns around and falls onto the bed, his feet still firmly planted on the floor. Brian takes a moment to pull his legs out from under Pat’s ass, folding them on either side of his hips.

“What decency?” Pat asks. He smiles at Brian’s tired, weak whine of protest and kisses the top of his head in as much of an apology as he’s going to give. “And, for the record, I’m always down for your indecent. Uh, not the, uh…” 

Brian giggles and pulls his head up, a crooked grin settled on his beautiful, flushed face, pulls his glasses off and yanks an arm out from under Pat’s back to toss them to the other side of the bed in the general direction of the nightstand. He slides Pat’s off and throws them as well, and there’s a light _clink_ as the two pairs smack against each other. 

He lightly kisses Pat’s jaw. “Thank you for wanting to deal with my indecent self.” 

“I’ll always want to deal with you, no matter what,” Pat replies, hoping the message gets across. 

And maybe it does, because Brian’s smile brightens and he nudges Pat’s head so that their faces are only inches apart.

“I love you,” Brian gently says, voice quiet and almost scared, and Pat’s heart does something weird. It flutters, breaks, glues itself back together and melts into his lungs and warms, spreading itself through his veins and into the rest of his body. 

“Thanks,” Pat says, because his brain is a bit behind, still caught up on their position. It catches up and he mentally kicks himself. “I mean, uh-”

Brian laughs, his entire face wrinkling up. He kisses Pat’s chin and sighs fondly, his breath hot against Pat’s face. 

“I get you,” he says, and Pat sighs, relieved, and smiles.

“I’ve been trying for days,” he says, voice as low as he can manage considering he wants to get up and scream on the fire escape until the sun rises. “I was supposed to do it first.”

Brian shakes his head, his hair flying around wildly. He’s eventually going to get it cut, he keeps saying he is, but he also keeps saying that he and Pat are going to have a contest to see who’s going to cave and go to the barber first. And Pat keeps saying that he can just cut Brian’s hair, and Brian keeps shaking his head and saying that, while he trusts Pat more than he trusts anyone besides his family, he is never going to let Pat near his head with a sharp object. And then Pat grabs a spoon and chases him around the dinner table once until Laura claps her hands and glares because _family dinners are sacred, Patrick, you hooligan_.

“Nah,” Brian says. “I’m the romantic one. I was always gonna do it first.”

Pat raises an eyebrow. “Who’s the one that pays for dinner every time?”

“And who’s the one who plans every date?”

“Only because I haven’t been in a relationship for a decade and I don’t know what’s hip and cool anymore.”

Brian rolls his eyes and kisses Pat’s chin again, probably because it’s all he can reach in their current position. They should fix that. Eventually. 

“And I love you anyway,” Brian says. 

Pat pouts. “That’s twice. How am I supposed to compete with that?”

“Kiss me,” Brian simply says, smirking, knowing that it won’t happen. These requests usually turn into Pat licking his face and Brian screeching and running off to the bathroom. 

But, this time, Pat obliges, pressing his lips against Brian’s for a fraction of a second before pushing Brian off of him and to the side. His lips buzz, his heart _screams_ , and his hands shake as he sits up to work on unbuttoning his shirt for bed. God, Dr. Frank’s going to kill him next week. 

Brian makes a weird croaking-squeaking-coughing noise and sits up, gapes at Pat for a moment, and eventually smiles triumphantly and flops back onto the bed on his side, propped up on his elbow and watching Pat undress like the little freak he is.

“You need to shave,” he says, and Pat rolls his eyes and throws his shirt at his face.

-

He goes ahead to the morgue without Brian, hoping that the subway won’t make his hangover any worse. It does. 

By the time he walks through the doors and slips the obligatory mask on, he has his sunglasses on over his glasses and his hair tied back in a greasy attempt at a low ponytail. Simone glances up at him from across the room and honks, throwing her head back. He winces and presses his hands to his temples.

“Please stop,” he croaks. 

Simone, to her credit, lowers her voice to a dull roar and puts the decapitated head in her hands down on the examination table. 

“The hell were you doing on a Thursday night?” she asks, flinching a bit as he approaches.

He and Brian slept in, he didn’t have time for a shower since he let Brian take his first and he was too busy throwing up into the kitchen sink to even think about deodorant. Daniel took one look at him on his way out the door and ran back into his room long enough to grab a bottle of his partner’s weird lavender-cinnamon perfume, spray about half the bottle on him, and shove the bottle in his hands and run out the door with a growl. 

“Playing Monopoly,” he deadpans. He takes a look at the child’s head and gags, turning around and taking a few steps away, leaning forward over the nearest empty examination table and bracing himself against it, closing his eyes. 

“Must’ve been one hell of a game,” she comments. 

“You- _fuck_ -” he gags again and lowers his mask under his nose, taking in a deep breath of stale, minty-fresh morgue air. “You could say that.”

“Lemme guess, Brian’s worse than you and got stuck back at the station?”

Pat shakes his head. “He doesn’t get hangovers. He’s a freak. Can we hurry this up?”

He can practically hear Simone’s eye roll. “Whatever. What do you need from me today, detective?”

“Just a time of death,” he answers. He and Brian have everything else they need. 

They know who did it (the kid’s parents, took her out on a boat trip around the harbor and cut her head off and dumped the body in the ocean. Kid was pulled up a few days later, identified almost immediately, and the parents are unwilling to talk about anything, especially to a greasy, hungover detective and his too-perky partner). They know the method (boat propeller, Brian had immediately concluded upon seeing the photos. Messy, but can get the job done. Pat didn’t want to ask how he knew that). They have a motive (apparently the parents are going through hard times and the kid was one of those “special” kids that need more attention than the others). All they need is a time to pin on the parents, and that’ll be that. All done within a day. A record, really. They’ll probably celebrate with a movie. 

“Around nine p.m.,” Simone says. “Kinda hard to pin with a drowned, ballooned-up body, but I’m almost certain that’s it.”

Pat nods and stands, pulls his mask back up, stumbles as the world lurches and his stomach threatens to rebel yet again. He catches himself back on the table and groans. 

Simone’s shoes click against the floor as she walks over, the snap of her rubber gloves being pulled off making Pat’s teeth set. She puts a hand on his back and pats it. 

“You need me to call you a cab?” she asks. 

He shakes his head. “I’ll be fine. Can I just, ugh. You got a phone I can use? Gotta tell Brian the time of death so we can get this shit over with.”

Simone makes an affirmative sound. “Come on, I’ve got one in my office.”

She loops an arm around his back, holding him up by his armpit, and he shakes himself loose and scowls. He straightens himself up and brushes a few loose strands of hair behind his ear. 

Simone rolls her eyes and leads him out of the room and down the hall to her office a bit slower than she would normally be going. She pulls her mask off and tucks it into a pocket in her coat; Pat just slides his into his shirt pocket just in case he needs to protect the subway later.

“So your Monopoly game,” she says, and Pat immediately steels himself. He knows that voice, that’s her _please tell me you two finally got your shit together_ voice. It’s been a mainstay for the past several months, mostly since she’s apparently the only person he knows who hasn’t figured it out yet despite him trusting her and telling her repeatedly that he and Brian have been going steady for months now. “Was it just you and Brian?”

He sighs and nods. “Yeah. We were celebrating therapy. Five months, baby.”

“Right.” She nods. “And it was Strip Monopoly, right? Just like I told you?”

He coughs wildly, stopping to brace himself against a wall. He nods at a confused set of interns as they walk by. Simone smirks and claps a hand on his shoulder. 

“Regular Monopoly, Simone!” he hisses. “I’m not gay!”

She nods again. “Of course, Pat. I forgot.”

“I am extremely into women who aren’t you,” he says, just in case she “forgot”, which she often does.

“Of course.”

“And,” he adds, raising a finger. “my partner is not gay. No faggot would have a mustache like that.”

She snorts in agreement. “You’re right. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

He nods and pushes himself off the wall. “Good. Now lead me to your phone, woman.”

She smacks his arm, _hard_ , and he yelps and grips it. He shoots her a glare that he’s pretty sure penetrates his sunglasses, and she just shrugs. 

“Remember your place, male scum,” she humbly says, and then she turns on her heel and continues down the hallway. Pat rolls his eyes and follows, rubbing his arm. 

Simone’s office, as to be expected, has at least five skulls dotted around. One on her desk has a pair of Groucho Marx glasses on. One on top of an open filing cabinet is painted with makeup that Pat recognizes as Jenna’s (the blue lipstick gives it away). One on the windowsill facing the outside world has a curly ginger wig on. And the other two sit as bookends, both grinning widely. And there’s probably more. There’s probably an entire skeleton hidden around the room. 

Simone digs around a pile of folders and papers and pulls out a bright pink phone with a triumphant cry that leaves Pat’s ears ringing. She puts it on the desk and pulls a phonebook off of a bookshelf, as if Pat doesn’t know Brian’s desk’s number by now. 

He goes to sit in her terrifying-looking office chair and flinches as something sharp and bony sticks into his ass. He sits up and pulls a skeletal hand out and tosses it in Simone’s direction; she catches it and puts it next to the phone. 

“Seriously, though,” she says, leaning forward against the desk. Pat shrinks back slightly in his seat. She grins wickedly. “you ask him out yet?”

“Literally yes,” he says for the hundredth time. 

She rolls her eyes. “Therapy celebrations don’t count, Pat. I’m talking the real shit. Movies, romantic walks in the Village at sundown, picnics. You know, that stuff.”

“He has slept at my apartment. In my bed. Last night, even,” he flatly says. He dials the number for Brian’s desk and puts the receiver to his ear, tapping his fingers against the handle as he waits for Brian to pick up. God knows he never does until the fourth ring. 

And, of course, it’s the fourth ring when Brian’s voice comes through, asking, _“Detective Gilbert. How can I help you?”_

Pat smiles and leans against the arm of the chair, staring Simone in the eyes. “Hey, babe, it’s me. Got good news. Kid died right when the parents were seen out on the harbor.”

Simone mouths out, _‘babe?’_ , a devilish grin crossing her face. Pat winks at her, knowing she can’t see it. 

_“That’s great!”_ Brian cheers. He pauses. _“Well, uh, not the death. You know.”_

Pat snorts. “Yeah, I get you. I, uh, I don’t think I’m going to make it back to the station today. Think I’m gonna go home and rest up. Maybe we can go see that vacation movie again tonight to celebrate?”

_“Yeah, of course! I can finish things up here. You feel better, buddy.”_

“I’ll try,” Pat says. He feels something sit on the tip of his tongue, not knowing what it is. But it’s heavy, almost painfully so. He swallows and pushes his sunglasses up into his hairline. “See you tonight.”

 _“See you,”_ Brian says. And the line goes dead. 

Pat puts the receiver back on the stand and pushes the phone away. He crosses his arms and raises a challenging eyebrow at Simone, who is almost vibrating in place. 

“Called it,” she says, and he rolls his eyes and throws a wad of paper at her.

-

As threatened last time they saw the movie, Brian brings his roommates along. Laura’s fine. Pat can deal with Laura; she’s basically Brian but with at least three knives on her person at all times and a habit of threatening Pat with stealing his shoes if he ever thinks about breaking her baby brother’s heart while Brian’s occupied getting snacks or trying to convince Jonah that they don’t need to go see _Octopussy_. 

“Those new shoes?” she asks as Brian excuses himself to go piss before the movie starts. 

Pat huffs and glares at her. “Do you really think I can afford new shoes?”

She shrugs innocently. “Just asking. Don’t want them to get ruined, that’s all.”

Jonah pulls off a shoe and puts it on his seat to save it before scooting over to the one Brian just left, right next to Pat, and he throws Laura a conspiratal look over Pat’s shoulder. Pat sighs and throws his head back. 

“You know,” Jonah says, shaking his head. “it would be a shame if you woke up and those puppies were slashed open like a gutted fish.”

Pat fixes him with a firm look. “Are you threatening a police officer, Mr. Scott?”

Jonah raises his hands defensively. “Of course not. Just worried, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Laura says, bobbing her head in agreement. “We’re very worrisome people.”

“Sure are,” Pat dryly says. “Look, guys, I know what you’re doing. But you don’t need to worry about it. I’m not planning on pulling anything. I love him.”

As Jonah quirks an eyebrow and the trademark Gilbert smirk grows on Laura’s face, Pat realizes what he just said, the pronoun he used, the fact that it’s so easy to say when not to Brian’s face that it slipped out _by accident_ , and he forces down a blush and slumps in his seat. 

Jonah pats his shoulder “comfortingly”, just a bit too hard to be anything other than threatening. 

“I think you should come over for dinner tomorrow,” he says. “Laura’s making pizza.”

“I can’t say no to pizza,” Pat weakly laughs. 

Laura pats Pat’s other shoulder, also just a bit too hard to be anything other than threatening.

“I don’t think you had a choice,” she says. 

Thank God above Brian’s struggling his way back through the row and to his seat before Pat has a chance to actually, literally die. He raises his eyebrows at his roommates and they all seem to have a silent conversation that lasts entirely too long, all with Jonah and Laura continually patting Pat. 

Brian eventually shakes his head and smacks Jonah’s head lightly. “Move it, Scott.”

Jonah smiles easily and moves back over to his seat, pulling his shoe back on and immediately stealing a handful of popcorn from the stranger next to him. Laura winks at Pat once before turning her attention to the screen, tapping her fingers on his shoulder briefly before pulling her hand away and stealing Brian’s soda, pulling it to her seat and taking a very loud slurp and eventually handing it back. Brian just sighs. 

Pat leans in close to his partner’s ear and whispers, “I think your roommates are criminals.”

Brian lets out a tinkle of a laugh that makes Pat’s heart skip, and he shakes his head, his hair whipping into Pat’s face. 

“They’re the goddamn Batmen, Patrick. Don’t you dare arrest them.”

Pat spits out a chunk of hair and rolls his eyes. “Then tell them to stop threatening my shoes.”

Brian makes a show of looking down at Pat’s incredibly normal, innocent shoes. 

“Those puppies new?” he asks, accepting the light punch to the arm he gets in return.

As the movie starts a few minutes later, Pat waits until the lights go completely down before reaching over a few inches and taking Brian’s hand in his. Brian’s hand tenses briefly before relaxing, and they stay like that until the movie ends and Laura threatens to call the cops on them for being too romantic at a goddamn Chevy Chase movie.

-

After a dinner that went better than it should’ve, Pat and Brian crawl into bed and try to keep quiet. Brian grabbed his guitar from the wall on the way in and now sits, cross-legged, on the foot of the bed, quietly strumming something that Pat only vaguely recognizes as something Sinatra sang once. 

“I used to play,” Pat says after a few more songs. Brian hums questioningly, shifting to just repeating a few chords in an attempt to listen. Pat tilts his head towards the guitar. “Back in my day, everyone did. It was rebellion.”

Brian smiles softly. “‘Back in your day’? Pat, dear, you’re thirty-one.”

“And I’m old as fuck,” Pat reminds him, because he is. He tried wrestling Brian for the last slice of pizza and won at the price of his back being stiff for the rest of the night. Now, as he tries to sit up, his back pops in several locations he didn’t even _know_ could pop and he groans, flipping Brian off at his very obvious laugh. “Fuck off, I’m an old man.”

Brian nods amiably. “Of course, old man. Forgot.”

Pat lightly kicks his leg. “Mind your elders, kid.”

Brian rolls his eyes, and, after a moment, he holds out his guitar. Pat takes it reverently, running his fingers along the strings. He crosses his legs and holds the guitar loosely, a faint muscle memory kicking in because he sure as fuck doesn’t remember how to hold this thing correctly after all these years.

“Play me something,” Brian demands, flopping back onto the bed and propping his head up against Pat’s knee. 

Pat flips some hair out of his face and shrugs. “I said I used to play. Can’t remember anything.”

“You went to Woodstock, Patrick.”

“You think I remember anything from Woodstock?”

Brian pouts up at him, his puppy eyes returning, and there’s no way that Pat can compete with those. He sighs and picks out a chord, flinches because he doesn’t even know what note that was. But he takes a breath, hopes that his fingers know what they’re doing, and lets them go wild. 

It takes a moment for him to realize what song it is he’s playing, but when he does, all he can do is smile and shake his head. And it takes Brian just a bit longer, but he ‘aww’s and looks up at Pat with the softest, most beautiful smile Pat’s ever seen. 

“Really?” Brian asks. “I would’ve thought you too tough for McCartney.”

“All you need is love, baby,” Pat says in the worst Ringo impression he can pull off. 

His fingers skip a few notes, and he swears under his breath. But he somehow manages to recover at around where he left off, this time joined by Brian quietly singing along. Of course he knows the words, but he didn’t listen to _Magical Mystery Tour_ the day it came out. And, as Brian takes the guitar back to play _When I’m Sixty-Four_ , Pat hums along, tapping the notes into the top of Brian’s head with one finger. 

-

Brian comes in on a Sunday morning at eight-in-the-fucking-morning with coffee, and Pat takes the cup in his hand with a relieved groan and a, _“Thank you, I love you, you’re beautiful”_. 

And then he realizes that they aren’t alone in the station. Some of the straggling night shift are still sitting around with their hockey sticks and pina coladas, Clayton’s struggling his way through the door with three boxes of files in his arms, Tara’s sitting three desks away reading a magazine and making sure that Pat’s actually doing his work for once. Because maybe he’s only here because he was too busy avoiding doing his paperwork to do it and Tara threatened him with the night shift if he didn’t finish it by noon Sunday. Brian didn’t even need to come, he did his day one, of course. 

“Took you long enough,” Tara comments. She holds a hand out, palm-up, and the remaining night shift grumbles and pulls out their wallets. Pat watches as they hand her money, his coffee steaming up his glasses. 

Brian smiles. “Love you too, Pat.” He bends down to kiss the top of Pat’s head, ruffling his hair before pulling his chair over and sidling up next to him. He takes a sip of his coffee. “What’re we working on?”

“Paperwork,” Pat absently says, feeling miles and miles away. He slowly puts his coffee down on his desk next to his typewriter, slowly puts his hands over his reddening face, and slumps in his seat as much as he can without falling out. Though hiding under his desk really does seem like a good idea right now. 

Pat jumps as Tara cuts in sharply, saying, “Okay, boys, this is cute and all, but Pat, I swear to God, I will put you on night shift if you don’t get that paperwork done.”

Pat whines, “Tara, please, I’m having a crisis.”

“And you’ll have an even worse one if you don’t finish your work.”

Someone, presumably Brian, claps a hand on Pat’s shoulder and squeezes lightly, rubs a tiny little circle into it. 

“Is it the Valdez case?” Brian asks, waiting for Pat’s nod to continue. “I can help. Then Chinese.”

“You think Dr. Frank takes walk-ins?” Pat flatly asks. 

Tara claps her hands twice. “Glad you two came to an agreement! Now get back to work.”

Pat sighs and slowly drags himself back up into a proper sitting position, his back protesting at the sudden change. He pulls his hands from his face and, after a moment of deliberation, pulls a bottle of vinegar out from the bottom drawer of his desk, unscrews the cap, and takes a long swig. One of the night shift guys gags and runs to the bathroom on the other side of the room. Brian just sighs and shakes his head. 

“You are disgusting,” he says. 

“You love me, anyway,” Pat winks, because the liquid courage always helps. It’s bitter enough to fight back the anxiety, disgusting enough to keep him from making it too normal, and stupid enough to give him a stupid amount of confidence any time he pulls it out.

Brian rolls his eyes fondly and plants a kiss on Pat’s cheek before rolling closer to the desk and reading over what Pat already has written. 

Pat takes another swig of vinegar, pours some into his coffee, and puts it away. When he looks back up at the room, he smiles a little at Tara’s thumbs-up and carefully returns it. 

-

“Oh,” Pat says as soon as Brian walks into the station. “God, no.”

“Hey,” Brian grins, leaning against Pat’s desk, slinging his sunglasses off his face with a flick of the wrist. He tucks his sunglasses into his breast pocket and cocks a hip. “Notice anything different?”

“Haircut,” Pat deadpans, eyes slowly sliding from his partner’s face to his legs. He should be working. They have a new case. It’s murder. Real scary. Sad. Upsetting, even. Definitely something that takes priority over the fashion nightmare Brian David Gilbert has going on right now.

Brian’s smile turns crooked and he puts his foot up on Pat’s desk, his leg inches from Pat’s face. Pat rolls his eyes and pushes it off.

“They’re all the rage,” Brian says. He puts his leg back up; Pat decides to let it stay. He’s being very generous. “And Jonah bet me I wouldn’t wear them to work.”

“Ah,” Pat nods. “How much are you getting out of this?”

“A weekend alone in the apartment with a man of my choosing.”

Pat widely grins. “And who might that man be?”

Brian winks at him, is about to say something, but his vision catches on the file on Pat’s desk and he’s immediately in work mode, pulling his leg down and bending over Pat to read it, his hand on Pat’s shoulder, squeezing tighter as he reads. 

The shorts brush against Pat’s pants, and he knows that there is no way that he’s ever going to love those things like he loves the mustache. They’re a monstrosity. Disgusting. Horrifying. Atrocious. Easily the worst thing Pat’s seen in his entire life. 

“Boat crime?” Brian asks, in that innocent _I still get excited for every one of these despite getting a new one almost every day_ way that Pat knows and loves, that Pat feels every time he gets handed a new case when he walks in every morning. 

Pat genuinely smiles and nods, pushing his glasses up. “Boat crime.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Thank you to my lovely editor, Electrictrashcan, without whom this fic would've turned out as hot shit. I can't read. Or write. Rip. Go check their shit out if you want. Or do it anyway. No pressure. 
> 
> 2\. This fic started out as a shitpost, something I wrote one scene for while trying to work on a different au that actually never came to be. But some people on a discord server begged for more while I was asleep, so I sat down and wrote 3k words the next day. And now look at this monster. 
> 
> That's all to say: thank you so much for your encouragement and support. I absolutely would not have written this without all the comments I got, all the feedback from friends who aren't even on this website, my sister for telling me stupid shit to write (like Pam being a mob boss). My friends on the rpf server I'm part of giving me endless love and support that I didn't even deserve at points (I can be a real ass when I'm anxious). Myself for not giving up. 
> 
> 3\. These boys are not getting shelved just yet. I've still got ideas for them. But in the future when I don't have five other things I'm working on. (I'll give you a hint for my next 'big' project: it's fucking weird). But for the Boat Cops, well, they still have a good couple decades before they can tie the knot. I'm sure they'll have some fun in the meantime. 
> 
> 4\. Find me on tumblr: [asorrywrite](https://asorrywrite.tumblr.com/)
> 
> I'm taking requests! And stuff! Yeehaw!
> 
> 5\. So long, space cowboy.


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